Our Montessori Birthday Celebration

I have always loved the Montessori birthday celebration.  While it is simple, I've never managed to pull it together before.  I was so excited to introduce it last week for William's fourth birthday.

I began by setting up the sun and the days of the year.

I made a simple sun by cutting the shape out of yellow felt.  I found the printable month headings here.

The birthday boy stood near the month of his birth and held the continent globe.

He then began to walk slowly around the sun 4 times, one for each year of his life.

With each trip around the sun, William stopped at his birth month so we could talk about the story of his life.  Traditionally, families write out a short story and collect pictures for the celebration.  I decided to take it a step further and make a simple birthday book that I can add to each year.  I created a special page about his birth and then one page per year after that.

I created the book in a basic three ring binder.

Each story page had 5-6 memories.

Each story page is followed by three pictures from that time span.  I used these inserts.

As a side note...  I love how the book turned out.  I don't have the time or will to create elaborate scrapbooks.  The prospect of simply adding 5-6 memories and 3 photos per year seems well within reach.  I can also put this out during family birthday parties and digitize it when they reach adulthood.  And yes, I'm making them for the other children as well.

Everyone enjoyed hearing about William's life.  It was a very special time for our family.  I'm so glad that I was finally able to pull it off.  This will certainly be an integral part of each of our children's birthdays from here on out.  If you'd like to learn more about the traditional Montessori birthday celebration for other ideas, check out this article from Montessori Print Shop.

After we finished, William blew out the candle.