|
The Montessori Way
Celebration Of Life Ceremony Children love birthdays and this is our special way of celebrating. It is not about presents and cake rather the simple pleasure of existing.
The “Celebration of Life” is a history walk of happy moments and memories each birthday child can share with the class. This celebration is a way to honor and commemorate a life and makes a new memory for this current birthday. As parents you are the most important person in your child’s life and we invite you to attend and participate.
We celebrate birthdays in our classrooms in the following ways:
1.
We dramati 2. We read special events in the life of the birthday child, as supplied by the parent for the teacher to read or told directly by the parent if they are available to come to class on that day. 3. We invite the birthday child to bring one photo for each year of life. Your child will be asked to talk or write about each photo. 4. Each person at the circle gives a special birthday wish to the birthday child. 5. You are invited to send a simple nutritious snack and box drink – no birthday cake please.
Preparation For the Ceremony: 1. Pictures Please gather a picture for every year of your child’s life up to and including the current birthday age. (Birth, One, Two, Three etc.) On the back of each photo please write your child’s age Your child will make a personal time line with the photos The photos will be returned
Please complete the Celebration of life history page giving a brief history of events for each year. 3. Snack At the end of the celebration we serve the special snack you send in. Please provide napkins and keep in mind the treat needs to be finger friendly and easy to consume without a lot of mess. Please choose from the following
1. Fruit
cups or fruit on skewers
2. Finger sandwiches 3. Little cupcakes with light icing 4. Little muffins 5. Vegetables with dip 6. Cheese and crackers
Two Weeks Before Celebration The Celebration of life history pages are located in the Parent Center in the front office. Please return along with your child’s photos to your child’s teacher two weeks before your child’s scheduled celebration. At that time please indicate the snack you have chosen to send in.
Birthday Parties Outside of School If you are planning a party outside of school, please send your personal invitations by telephone or mail. The children are very aware of invitations that come to school and those who are not invited, even in another classroom, are often very sad that they have not been included.
The Ceremony: The Purpose of the Ceremony for the child: 1. To Appreciate the gift of life. 2. To celebrate the child’s place in history. 3. To learn the months of the year. 4. To prepare the child for an understanding of the movement of the earth around the sun. 5. To help the child understand the idea of a year as a cycle of the movement around the sun.
Personal Time Line The day before the celebration the child and teacher make the personal time line
“The Celebration of Life” One or two chairs are placed outside of group for the parents or the parents are welcomed to sit on the floor joining the class in the circle. The Birthday child is seated to the right of the teacher. 1. The birthday box is brought to the group. 2. The teacher turns on the flameless candle which represents the sun and places it in the center of the circle.
3. The timeline is placed on the birthday corkboard for all to see.
The title across the board is “Today we celebrate __________” Below
the title and above the timeline is the child’s birt 4.The teacher places the months of the year labels outside of the candle in a circle and invites the children to sing the months of the year song as the labels are placed. 5. The teacher asks the birthday child to find the label that says their month and stand at it. The teacher begins by saying “On August 18th 2005(name of child) came to live with (parents names). This is a picture of Christian when he was a baby.” (point to the timeline) Read the parents comments or ask the parents if they are present “how did you feel on the day when baby _____ came to live with you?” 6. The teacher hands the globe to the birthday child and explains it takes one whole year for the earth to go around the sun for us to have a birthday. The child begins stepping by each month while the teacher and the class say the months. At the completion of a year we say “ and then Christian was one” Point to the timeline “this is a picture of Christian when he was one. sing: “we celebrate your birth and your place on earth may the moon sun and stars give you peace where you are.” The teacher points to the timeline “this is a picture of Christian when he was one. The teacher reads the statement from that time in the child’s history or the parents tell it if they are present. The celebration continues until the current year has been honored.
7. Each tea 8. If the child has brought a gift for the class or a book for the class library they may present it to the group. 9.Ask the children to help “blow out” the flameless candle. 10.Gather all of the birthday materials and place them back in the box.
If a snack was brought to the celebration it is shared here.
THE BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION
Please provide an interesting thought, anecdote or comment about each year of your child’s life to be shared with his class as your child symbolically traverses the sun for each year of his life.
Celebration of Life
On
___________________________________ in (Month/Day/Year) (City/State) __________________________________________________________________ was born. Child’s first/middle/last name
I/we felt_________________________________________________________________.
As a baby -
1 year old –
5 years old-
Website was created and maintained
by Kimberlee Herbic
http://www.funtasticdesigns.com.
You do not have
permission to use any graphics on this page. Please click on the
graphic icon above to see where graphics were purchased. Thank
you in advance for not copying.
|
