Celebrating Birthdays

Everyone loves birthdays! Well, teenagers, love their birthdays, at least. You may have to check your school policy, but in my class we celebrate everyone’s birthday by singing “Feliz Cumpleaños” and I let them wear the birthday sombrero.

At the beginning of the year I collect everyone’s birthdays through our grade book system, but next year I may add it to my student-info survey to make it easier. I create a spreadsheet and post it near my board. This way, when I write the date each morning, I also write the birthdays for that day.

I call on the birthday student for the date when we go through our three morning questions. “What is the date today?”

Then I exclaim to the entire class: “And today is her birthday!”

Then we sing!

You can see from the picture that I let my students choose Spanish names. I know this is hotly debated and some people are very much against it, but it has worked for me. Also, with regards to the birthday sombrero, I just printed out “Feliz Cumpleaños” and stapled it to a hat. I hand it to each student and it is his/her choice if s/he wants to wear it. Many students just leave it on the back of their chair for the day, but others come in overly excited to wear it.