How Do You Celebrate Birthdays?

     This topic has even made headlines in the National news lately.  It seems that some schools are having a heated debate with parents whether their child should be able to have a birthday party at school.   I've seen posts on other blogs where parents actually ask this question as to whether it's OK and other parents seem to just assume that it is and are writing in on how to make their child's day extra special.  Then there are some parents who are irate that they can't send in a cake or cupcakes.  How do you  feel about this?

     I have a "no cake or cupcakes" rule and state the "birthday policies" in my Student Handbook.  The fact that some parents still send them in, shows how many parents don't thoroughly read it!  I don't want children feeling bad when their parents don't do the same thing as other parents;  this is one of the reasons I opt for the no cake or cupcake rule, but the biggest reason  is that it's really not a nutricious snack for snack time and more than half of my students don't even eat them. 

They lick the frosting off, getting it up their nose and on their clothes and fingers.  They make a sticky mess all over themselves and on the desks.  Some of them, despite my warning, still crumble up the cake and have crumbs all over the floor which invariably gets stepped. Then I hear complaints from the janitors. The ants have a field day as well and are a perpetual problem no matter what the season. 

I've listed all kinds of things, throughout my site, that I do for birthdays to make a child feel special.  Here are some of those links.

For my article Lets Celebrate Birthdays with some great freebies click on the link.  Birthday Article

For monthly bears click here.

For birthday cakes click here.

As always,  if you'd like to share somthing that you do for your students/children on their birthdays, please drop me a note and I will post it. Thanks in advance.

diane@teachwithme.com