Birthday Recognition

I always felt bad that I never found a way to recognize birthday's my first year of teaching (mainly because I was so overwhelmed). I fixed that the next year with my birthday wall.

One of the "getting to know you" activities I have students do at the beginning of the year is put their name and birthday on an index card (the month goes on the back). They decorate it to reflect their personality and then they put it on my birthday wall under the month labels I have up (moving other cards around until they get them in date order). This gives students a chance to see who shares a birth date or month with them (and serves as a visual reminder of who has birthdays coming up for me).

Last year I "celebrated" the monthly birthdays on the first day of the month and gave each birthday student an Oreo Cakester (this is when I was on a two man team). This year we decided that each homeroom teacher would take care of their birthday students with an Oreo Cakester so as to not overwhelm one teacher with purchasing all the treats. It worked out great.

I just gave out the June/July Cakesters for the month (picture above).

I chose Chocolate Oreo Cakesters because I made the mistake of offering two many choices that first year and I was stuck with a lot of one type of treat and not enough of another. The Cakesters seemed to be popular, affordable, they keep well, and come two in a packet (which the students love). I let them eat it right on the spot (usually in the morning...and it is the high point of our first school day of the month).

I am in the process of switching classroom and I wanted to take a picture of my birthday wall for future setup reference...hence the post :)

Comments

Chrissie McKinnon said…

I found your blog because of Pinterest and absolutely love it!
I teach 5th grade and celebrate birthdays by eating lunch with the student in the lunch room. (Can you believe that they consider that a good thing?!) They are usually in such a hurry to get out to recess that it only takes me fifteen minutes and I can still get my adult time in for the remainder of lunch.
Peace
Chrissie
Rochester MN

February 5, 2012 at 8:06 PM

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