Celebrating Birthdays at School

Hi! I am Michelle from Teach123. I am excited to be a new member of this blog.

In the summer, do you reflect over your school year? Do you look for new ideas and tweak things a little? That is what I have recently done with my blogging journey. I was on some collaborative blogs when I first began, but I got overwhelmed and quit them when I had trouble keeping up with all of the commitments.

Those of you who follow my blog know that my friend, Fern and I do some fun stuff together. I have to confess that she is the more social one of our partnership. She is always joining a new Facebook group or collaborative blog or another this or that. Meanwhile I just plug along doing my thing. All along Fern has been telling me that I needed join this blog. She loved working with this group of teacher bloggers. I can't wait to see what all we will be doing this year!

Celebrating birthdays is something that each school seems to do a little different. I was teaching in Texas when the Foods of Minimal Nutritional Value policy began. My policy up until then was:

Parents can send in a snack to celebrate their child's birthday. The snack needed to be single serving size (not a cake). It needed to be ready to serve (pre-cut).
Parents need to send in all serving utensils, napkins, plates, or other supplies needed.
No drinks.
No gifts or balloons.
Snack needed to be dropped off in the office by 9 a.m.
If birthday invitations are passed at out school, all the girls, all the boys, or the entire class must be invited so we can avoid hurt feelings.

After the new policy was put into place, I had to do some brainstorming. Cupcakes, cookies, and brownies were the staple of how my students celebrated their birthday at school. I think at that point I had taught almost ten years so I was kind of set in my ways for how to celebrate birthdays at school.

I made goodie bags for my students and hung them on a clothesline. This is an easy way to add color to your classroom.

If you have a theme, you can find thematic bags, too!

I used a variety of things in my treat bags through the years. Sometimes it was simple things and other times they were pretty snazzy. It depended on what I found on sale.

I also like to do an activity called Birthday Star. I send home a note to the parent asking the parent to send their child's favorite book and other favorites to school.