What is a birthday?


 In the beginning of every school year we update our birthday mobile. It's a great time to start a conversation about why we have a birthday. So, what does it mean to have one? Our children gave us all kinds of answers. Many said things like: “ It's when you get presents” and “You get cake”. We tried to take it a bit farther. We asked them to break the word ‘Birthday’ down into two words. This is the first time we brought up the concept of compound words this year. 

So, we asked, “What does the word ‘birth’ mean?”  This time we got the answer, “It's when you come out of your mama’s tummy.”  Now we are getting somewhere! The conversation continued on to acknowledge that a birthday  is a celebration of the day you were born. We asked each child to draw a picture of themselves as a baby to hang on our birthday mobile. 















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