It’s a birthday… everyday
To a preschooler there are two important days every year, Christmas, and their birthday. In our classroom we had two birthdays to celebrate right after Winter break, and ever since our class has been consumer with every thing birthdays. Even the children who don’t have a birthday for 6 more months are excitedly planning their own parties (and I do apologize to their parents)!
It seemed only natural that we make this a tangible part of our classroom, so today we introduced birthday items into our dramatic play area. We included birthday plates, cups, and napkins, special ice cream bowls and an ice cream scoop, birthday candles, cupcake wrappers, gift bags, tissue paper, and vases with fake flowers.
Oh. My. Goodness. You would have thought that we let them loose in a toy store. They were loving it. At one point the entire class was in the dramatic play area, but there was no fighting whatsoever. Wow. Eventually we did have to break it up, so we added some felt cupcakes that I had cut out last week – in another area of the room, so that everyone got to use new materials, but they weren’t on top of each other.