Birthdays in the classroom can be fun for all students! In my experience, students get really excited when they can celebrate their birthday with their peers. As a teacher, I find it important to create a positive classroom community. One way I do this is by creating a routine to celebrate birthdays in the classroom!
Displaying Birthdays in the Classroom
I love to have a small bulletin board to display student birthdays. My first graders love seeing their name and they get excited to see everyone else’s birthday as well. As a busy teacher, it also is a life saver for me so I don’t forget anyone’s special day! I begin by creating a class anchor chart of everyone’s birthday month.
Next, my students complete a birthday graph activity. I put these graphs up on my bulletin board at the beginning of the year. The students love seeing all the birthday cakes!
After I take them down, I put a smaller board up on display with everyone’s birthday. This display stays up for the remainder of the year and is often one of our most visited boards.
Celebrating Student Birthdays in the Classroom
When it is a student’s birthday, they get to choose a seat cover display for the day. I found some cute birthday chair covers at the Dollar Tree. The birthday boy or girl is also interviewed by the class. In this activity, my first graders ask questions such as, “How old are you turning?” or “What’s your favorite activity?” I have found that this has really helped my students distinguish between a question and a statement. If you teach primary, then you know how valuable this skill can be!
After the interview, the class makes the birthday student a special keepsake book. The birthday boy or girl chooses a cover for their book and gets to complete a special page. The rest of the class works on a page for the book as well. My firsties light up with joy when they get to take their books home at the end of the day! If you are interested in having your students make birthday keepsake books, you can find them HERE.
When the birthday child gets their book, I also give them a special birthday gift from me. I make these bags at the beginning of the year and have them stored in my classroom. I like to put simple items inside such as a pencil, bouncy ball, homework pass, and sticker. Sometimes, the birthday child wants to give a gift to the class. In this case, I see if their parent wants to come in and do our read aloud for that day. Other times, I have had students bring in a book for me to read aloud to class or small goody bags to pass out at the end of the day.
Celebrating Summer Birthdays
For summer birthdays, I send home a note to parents and let them know we will celebrate their child’s half birthday in class. This way, all my students with summer birthdays also get to celebrate their special day with their peers and get their keepsake book!
Celebrating Student Birthdays Digitally
You can also celebrate student birthdays digitally. During remote teaching, I had my students use Flipgrid to create birthday videos. They loved that they could customize their videos with emojis, frames, and effects. It was also so fun to watch each video made by one of their friends. As a teacher, I loved how easy Flipgrid was to use! In addition to the videos, I also sent each student a special Google Slide for their birthday that had links to birthday read alouds and videos such as a directed drawing of a birthday cake.
Students birthdays can be so much fun and don't have to be hard. I hope this post gave you some ideas you can implement in your own classroom. If you are looking for other classroom ideas, check out this post on Using Digital Slides in the Classroom.
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