“Celebration of Life”
Everyone loves birthdays! And we are no different at iML! There are presents, cake, decorations and parties which are all soooo much fun but we especially love how many Montessori schools around the world celebrate birthdays with a special “Birthday Walk” recognizing a child’s birthday as a “Celebration of Life.” And since we are celebrating two birthdays on the same day in our family today, we thought you might like to learn about this simple birthday ritual too! The Montessori Birthday Celebration or “Birthday Walk” as it is sometimes called is a wonderful tradition that you could easily incorporate into your own family celebrations.
The “Birthday Walk” is used in many Montessori classrooms to symbolize a child’s journey on earth from newborn to school, marking the passage of time. It also introduces children to the concepts of months, days of the month, the rotation of the sun on its axis and how the earth revolves around the sun marking 365 days or one year.
This celebration is also used to help children recognize how they have grown during the year and how they have changed since their birth. It provides a special way to highlight them as well as create and foster a sense of community in the family and classroom.
“…for all things are part of the universe, and are connected with each other to form one whole unity. This idea helps the mind of the child to become fixed, to stop wandering in an aimless quest for knowledge. He is satisfied, having found the universal centre of himself with all things.” –Maria Montessori
We think this is such a beautiful ceremony that we created a special Birthday Walk printable that you can use at home with your families.
We also created a birthday timeline printable that you can use each year which is a great compliment to our birthday walk printable. It has a place for a picture of your child, a place for you to record a few milestones and highlights of your child’s life, or things they liked to do during that year in their life. We like to hang this on our wall during our child’s birthday week and use it as another way to teach time and space to young children. Plus it is just a sweet little reminder of how much a child has grown from birthday to birthday.
Prepare For the Birthday Walk
There is some preparation involved in order to get ready for this little presentation and while in our classrooms in California we use a specially made ‘Birthday Walk’ material or you can make your own as well.
Preparation:
1. Several days before your child’s birthday, prepare a little timeline of your child’s life, highlighting one or two special things that your child was doing during that time in his or her life including a few pictures for each year as well. You can find our timeline printable we use in our shop.
2. Gather a candle and lighter or matches. If you can find a candle snuffer it’s always a great touch but not necessary. We have found them at places like Homegoods, Target and on Amazon. You can find a great priced one here. 
3. Print off, laminate and cut out our Birthday Walk Printables.
4. You can use a regular globe or our printable globe to represent the earth. Here is one that we use in our classrooms here.
How to do the Birthday Walk
•A candle is lit in the middle of a circle or ellipse (Most Montessori school’s use an ellipse as a gathering place because it represents the earth’s orbit) The candle represents the sun. Labels with each month of the year are laid out in a circle radiating out from the “sun.”
•Everyone participating sits around the sun and months of the year, while the birthday child stands next to the month of his or her birth holding a globe.
•The child then walks around the sun one time for each year of his or her life. As the child walks, you can sing the The Earth Goes Round the Sun Song included with our birthday printables. Once the child makes his/her way around the sun, you can share a few things that he/she was doing or milestones that marked that time in your child’s life. (Our timeline printable is great for organizing these thoughts.) Continue doing this until your child goes around the sun one time for each year of life.
•At the end, we sing one more final birthday song that you can find with our birthday printables. Then we let our children extinguish the candle with a candle snuffer or blow it out as an end to the ceremony.
A Birthday Tradition
Another beautiful tradition that we have was started by my Grandmother who was also a Montessori Guide. She gave all of my children, and I suspect her other grandchildren the book called, “On the Day you Were Born,” by Debra Fraiser. You can find it here on Amazon.
It’s a beautiful illustration and reading of how the Earth and family eagerly await and welcome each child into the world! The story is full of such sweet reverence for life and love for humanity. We highly recommend getting this book and reading it to your child every year!
Let us know how your family ‘Birthday Walk’ experiences go! We would love to hear about your experiences and see photos! However you choose to enact this lovely ceremony, we hope it will become a special tradition for your families for years to come!
-Barbara, Rachel and Kayla
