Children need attention and acknowledgement on a regular basis. They crave it even more than we do. As a result, I believe it is very important to recognize all student birthdays in my classroom! We have a routine. It isn’t big but I wanted to share it with you. HINT: There is a lot of singing!
- During a whole group time we call birthday child up to the front
- We sing “How old are you now?” to the tune of Happy Birthday and count up to the number and stopping when the birthday child yells “stop!”
- We sing “Bonne Fête” to introduce some French in our class.
- We sing “Quel age as tu?” and count in French stopping at “arrêt!”
- The birthday child gets a crown!
I used to use bulletin borders as crowns or a blank crown which they would colour and design any way that they wanted. I recently changed this up as I didn’t want to worry about cutting the crowns out in the middle of class and I wanted my students to do it independently.
To prepare, at the beginning of the year, I cut out strips of poster board to go around their head and stored them in a safe location in the class. I then let them choose from a variety of pre-designed crowns which they get to to cut out and color.
They love bing able to pick from a wide assortment of abilities and wear their crown proudly all day!
Click on the image if you want to check them out!
