Birthdays in Preschool

There is one day during the year that is extra special because it celebrates you! We spent some time thinking about birthdays last month, as part of exploring our similarities and differences. Birthdays can be a great learning topic because the children already have background knowledge for how their family celebrates birthdays, and there are a lot of ways to integrate math, literacy, sensory, and social learning into birthday celebrations!

Birthday Cake Playdough

I first knew the students would be interested in birthdays when multiple children made birthday cakes out of playdough and straws. I loved the child-led learning that took place with this activity: different kids pretending it was a birthday cake, using fine motor skills to cut the candles, and counting the candles.

Water Beads Sensory Bin
Water beads are so bright and colorful, they seemed like a great addition to some birthday play. I was excited to see how the children would interact with them, and their imaginations really took off.  There was a lot of scooping, and making ice cream, soup, snail eggs, and more! This sensory material is hard to resist.

Birthday Cake and Ice Cream Dramatic Play

I set out various materials to encourage some dramatic play, like gift bags, pretend cakes, birthday crowns, ice cream scoops + cones, pipe cleaners and colorful pom poms.

 

 Counting Birthday Candles

These birthday cakes are made out of cardboard with tiny holes big enough for a pipe cleaner candle to poke through. That makes this a fine motor challenge and math activity all in one!

Balloon Painting + Parachutes
We  also used balloons as a painting tool, which was fun and a little messy if they accidentally popped...

And the favorite balloon activity was bouncing balloons on the class parachute. :)

Months of the Year

We used the topic of birthdays to talk about the months of the year, and how they go in a cycle. Time and the calendar year is a pretty abstract concept for preschoolers, but we focused on how each child has a special month, there are special things that happen during the months, and the idea that the pattern of months repeats itself over and over again. One way we did that was to walk around the names of the month in a circle, singing a little song. (hard to get a clear picture...)

We also used our all about me posters and birthday stars to see when everyone's birthdays fall.

Birthday Stars
We are starting a new birthday tradition in our classroom in this year by painting birthday stars and hanging them in our room. On a child's birthday, or Star Day, we will take the star down and they can take it home as part of their special day.