In the Montessori classroom, every child's birthday is celebrated in a special way. It is often called the "Walk Around the Sun." To celebrate the children's years on Earth, the child carries a globe (which is one of our works) as they walk around the sun ( represented in our classroom by a lightbulb). The child walks around the sun 1 time for each year of life. We talk about how the Earth goes around the sun and every time it goes around once that that is the same as one year or 365 days.
We will talk about how ther first year they were a baby and mostly just ate and slept. Then at age one he learned to walk and a little about them.. then age two he was talking and getting into everything. Age 3 they might have started Miss Janae's preschool and met all these new friends.
After the walk everyone sings Happy Birthday and then we count how old they are. The Birthday Child gets to choose what language we count it. Most love Japanese :)
After school is out the birthday child gets to sit outside and the friends come up to them and announce, "Happy Birthday!" the birthday friend then gets to hand out a treat to each child.
