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| This year I am starting out with a Birthday theme. I am excited about doing a theme on birthdays because I have never spent a whole theme unit on celebrating the children's birthdays. But after doing a lot of research, and searching thru hundreds of articles, books, songs, poems, and other ideas I have decided I want to try this, this year. Please be patient with me as I try to compile everything that I intend to use on this page. And I want to thank all the teachers who have shared their ideas with me and who have posted on the internet. Be sure to check out their links below. I don't think it will actually be finished until the unit itself has been completed. So, be sure to check back often. ;) |
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| The first thing I will be doing to get this unit started is writing a welcome letter that will be sent to each child's home. In the letter the parents will be instructed to complete a simple one page information page that will go into a special book that we will be compiling on the first day of school. It will be called "Our Class Family" book. Below you will see a the cover. This will be put into the cover of a 3 ring binder that holds plastic protectors into which the parents' pages will go. |
Our Class Family (Parents' Brag Book) Compiled by the parents for the children of Mrs. Schaefer's PreK Class St George's Episcopal Preschool 2003 - 2004 |
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| If you would like a copy of my letter to the parents & the parents' page below, please email me and I will get it to you asap. |
Name____________________________________ Birthday________________ My child is special because: _________________________________________ _________________________________________ _________________________________________ _________________________________________ |
Baby picture goes here |
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| I want to make mention that I got this idea after reading about another kind of Proud Parent Book by Dr. Jean on her website. |
| Birthday Sign In Children will sign in during this unit by placing a candle that has his/her name and birthdate on a very large cake. The cake will be put on a posterboard, laminated, and will have small velcro dots placed above the cake. Each candle will be laminated and will have the velcro dot on the back. All the children will have to do is find their name (maybe with their parents' help at first) and then attach it to the poster. Check back for photos of the finished poster. |
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| Center Control For learning center control during this unit you could display a birthday cake with the given number of candles on top. The number of candles are the number of children who can use that center. Each child could also use a clothes pin with a candle that has been laminated and hot glued onto the pin. The center name could be writen on the candle. The color of the candle might match the color of the cake for a second way of control. The child will then wear the "candle" in order to use the given center. |
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| Books I plan to use with this unit |
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| This is a story about a family who is about to celebrate their daughter's birthday. Through remembering each birthday's presents that the little girl gets, the family is able to describe how she is growing up. I think this book would really work well with our Proud Parent Book mentioned above. |
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| This book is about a family and how a little girl solves birthday problems. Where Moira's parents are not able to solve the problems calmly, Moira is. It's a lot of fun and wonderful pictures. I plan to talk about problem solving in the classroom and how we can work things out. |
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| This story is about a child's animal friends that show up to make a birthday cake. Each gives something special in order to make the cake. We will discuss how we each are special in our class and that we all don't do things in the same way, but we can be friends with every one. I also plan to do a take off of this book as a writing activity. First we will brain storm how to make a cake. I will bring in a cake box and a recipe book and will read each to the class. Then we will make our own Birthday cake recipe. I will write it down on chart paper and it will be used in our Read the Room activity. At the end of the unit we will bake a cake and decorate it. *It would be great fun if we could visit a bakery and watch as the bakers decorated a birthday cake! |
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| In this story a little bunny is trying to help his sister back a Birthday cake for their Grandma. He wants a cake made from worms with red hots on the top, and she wants a nice angel cake with raspberry filling. After many mix ups, Max has to go to the grocery for more ingredients, but doesn't know how to read or write so he uses pictures to tell the grocer what he needs. It's a lot of fun and the children will love finding out who's cake Grandma will eat. With this story we will talk about 1) which cake will Grandma eat? (prediction) and 2) we can communicate by other ways than reading or writing. I hope to use this book to encourage drawing and dictating stories. |
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| This is a beautiful picture book that I plan to use to encourage the children to really look at the pictures for clues when they are reading a story. Carl is having a 'surprise' birthday party and we follow people around as they prepare for the event. |
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| There are so many good books out there with a child's birthday as the theme. Below are a few I will have in our "Birthday Box" to be chosen from when a child has a birthday. |
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| Counting Cupcakes On medium sized cupcakes I have numbers 1 - 10. The object of the game is to line the cupcakes up in order. Programed on the back over all the cupcakes are the words HAPPY BIRTHDAY |
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| How many Candles do we need? In the 'play dough' area, supply the children with cupcake liners, play dough, and a supply of 15 birthday candles. Encourage the children to pick a programed card that has a number on it. The children are to make a cupcake with the play dough and put it in the liner and then add the appropriate number of candles. This activity encourages symbol to quantity. It also supports counting, not to mention fine motor, creativity, and social skills when done with a friend. |
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| It's a piece of cake! After making a birthday cake out of a round hat box, cut a circle that fits exactly to the top of the box. Cut the circle in 12 equal parts. And number each with a number from 1 to 12. You can be creative and decorate it in many fun ways. The object of this project is to put the cake back together again. If the child/children complete the task correctly then the border around the outside rim will match and this will be the self-check. Again, this activity supports number recognition and counting. |
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| Rainbow Cakes In this art activity each child is given a print out of a birthday cake. They are then instructed to 'ice' the cake with an array of beautiful colors. The 'colors' are tissue papers that are cut in all kinds of shapes and sizes. The child 'paints' the cake with liquid starch, a little at a time, then then gently puts the tissue paper on the starch. As the child overlaps the colors new colors are made and a discussion on what color mix to make a third can be introduced. This would be a good activity for both science, art, or fine motor. I am going to make our first class-made bulletin board using these cakes and will be making the board look like a bakery window. |
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| Get the picture! When we celebrate the end of this unit and we bake our Birthday cake, I will give the children party hats and blowers. We will have our picture taken as a group (hopefully everyone smiling :)) I am gonna get the picture enlarged and laminated. Then, whenever anyone has a birthday when they come to school there will be a poster on the door with a poster of all of us wishing the child a Happy Birthday. |
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| Ideas for individual birthdays throughout the year. I always make the birthday child a special crown that I cut out of a large piece of construction paper. I design the crown according to the child's likes or a favorite unit that we've done. Someday I'm gonna put this idea into a book for others to use. All the teachers at my school love to see what I will create next... I've made crowns that look like everything from an airport with planes to dinosaurs to doll houses to hearts with lace. It's a lot of fun! And they love to see what they will get. |
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| Birthday Vest The birthday child will have the opportunity to wear a specially decorated 'Birthday' vest. I use a plain denim vest and then decorate it with buttons, ribbons, rick rack, glitter, and anything else I might have. This stays at school for the next birthday. |
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| The Birthday Bag Buddy There are many of these type of bag to home bags out there, but I've just created one of my own. I bought a canvas bag at Wal-Mart and decorated it with an iron on decal of a birthday cake. I embellished it with glitter glue, and ribbon. Inside the bag are various birthday books, a sheet of birthday stickers, a file folder game like one of those mentioned above, a birthday card from me, fruit chews, and a complimentary cassette that the class has made in order to celebrate the classmate's birthday. We sing Happy Birthday, do a birthday chant, and then the children take turns taping a special birthday message (if they would like to). The child who takes the Bag buddy home gets to keep everything but the books and the file folder. Those things need to come back the next day. |
| I will be adding more poetry, chants, and birthday songs in a few days, so be sure to check back! :) |
| Leader of the day When a child has a birthday in our class they will be the "Leader of the day". With this comes being the 'help'. He/she will do all the classroom chores and they will have a special chair to sit on and will also have a special 'echo' microphone in order to give appropriate directions to others. |
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| On a day when we have a birthday in the room, I also play all kinds of birthday songs... from the oldies to various versions of the traditional 'Happy Birthday' song to children's silly songs. The kids like these and I've even seen them dancin to the music. |
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| Below you will see some of the books that I got many of the ideas from that are listed here. I want to thank those other teachers who put some of these ideas up on their sites so that people like myself could enrich their own curriculum. It is my hope in creating this page to help the next teacher, not in any way to take something from someone else, but to share what was given to me. |
| I will also be posting pictures of many or all the items described here as I get them developed. |
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| Candles on a Cake Five little candles on a birthday cake, Each one shining brightly, "See the light we make!" ____________ blew (whoooo) one candle out, counting 1 & 2 & 3 & 4, Saying, "Please, oh please, let me blow once more!" ____________ blew and blew, and one more light went out. And then there were just 1 & 2. Two tiny candles burning, "This is fun!" ____________ blew again and then there was 1. ____________ took one last, loud blow: (Whooooo) And then there were none! |
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| Updated Sept. 2, 2003 |