Birthdays!

The Plan

Books

A Birthday for Cow by Jan Thomas
The Birthday Box by Leslie Patricelli
Don’t Spill the Beans! by Ian Schoenherr
Magic Box by Katie Cleminson
The Secret Birthday Message by Eric Carle

Extension Activities

Action Rhyme: “A Birthday”
Today is everyone’s birthday
Let’s make us a cake (form cake with hands)
Mix and stir, stir and mix (stir)
Then into the oven to bake (push hands out)
Here’s our cake so nice and round (make a circle)
We frost it pink and white (spread frosting)
We put five candles on it (hold up hand)
To make a birthday bright!
Credit: Addison Public Library

Action Rhyme: “Birthday Months”
If your birthday is in January, turn around
If your birthday is in February, touch the ground
(March, march along; April, sing a song; May, wiggle your nose; June, shake your toes; July, jump up high; August, reach the sky; September, tap your shoe; October, call out “Boo!”; November, tickle your ears; December, give three cheers)
Credit: Addison Public Library

Song: “Happy Birthday” (English & Spanish)

Flannel: Five Candles
Five candles on a birthday cake
Five, and not one more
You may blow one candle out,
And that leaves four!
(There for all to see / three; Standing straight and true / two; Helping us have fun / one; We know its task is done / none)
Credit: Addison Public Library

Craft

Birthday party hats; purchased from Oriental Trading. These were self-stick, so all the kids had to do was color and their parents had to attach the string for the most part. (Looping the string through the hole, catching with the metal endpin.)

How It Went

I have to say — both of these storytime sessions were absolute DREAMS. I don’t know if knowing it was my birthday that week made them behave or if the storytime was just so engrossing that no one felt like running through the room; but I’m telling you — this is the stuff dreams are made of!

Thursday morning

This group had the most fun with “Magic Box.” And the book that I was worried about most, “Don’t Spill the Beans” turned out to be a huge success when I decided spur of the moment to have the kids whisper secrets after I read each page. Also, my mommas were thrilled when I sang with the kids “Happy Birthday” in both English and Spanish. I try my hardest to get some bilingual storytime moments, so I was happy to call upon my high school Spanish to remember how to sing “Feliz Cumpleaños.”

Friday morning

My daycare kids were thrilled with “The Secret Birthday Message” because they had just finished a unit on shapes! This book is all about a child finding a map to their present — but the map is not written out in words, but instead in all different kinds of shapes. They had a harder time with the action rhyme, “Birthday Months” — without parents around to remind them when it was their turn, most of the kids just did the action for every month — which I never even said anything. Their teachers, however, kept trying to get them to only do one. Sometimes it’s easier to just live and let live though!