Montessori Archives - Inspired Montessori Learning

The Birthday Walk

In many Montessori schools around the world you will find a sweet little birthday celebration called the “Birthday Walk.” This is a simple yet incredibly beautiful way to celebrate a child’s time on earth since their birth. You can go here to read about the ‘Montessori Birthday Celebration’ and access our free “Birthday Walk” printables. This month we have a really special day because our Emery and Lovey (Barbara), share the same birthday!

Gift Guide for a 3 year old

We get asked a lot of questions about what parents should get to put on their child’s work shelf that’s age appropriate. We know a lot of you have a child turning 3 soon so in honor of Emery’s birthday, we’re releasing our very first Gift Guide! Emery received some of these items for her birthday and the rest are items we already know and love. Can’t wait for you all to try them!

Some of these items are affiliate links which means we get a small commission if you purchase it, at no extra cost to you. This helps us keep our blog running. Rest assured, we stand behind all the items we list on this gift guide. Enjoy!

Birthday Cake – First up is this adorable Melissa and Doug Cake Cutting work. Emery is getting this for her birthday. We have already checked it out. Because Emery has been practicing her cutting skills both with other work like this and in the kitchen since she was 18 months old, we love that this is a double layered cake. It will be that much more challenging for her. But you don’t have to use the top layer if your 3 year old is just starting out cutting!
Stacking Rainbow – This stacking rainbow is such a great gift! It is really large and great quality. Your child can use it for creating a traditional rainbow or use the pieces for creative play. It will teach balance, problem-solving, pattern recognition, fine motor skills and is a beautiful wooden material.
Crayon Rocks – These are great for young children in developing and strengthening the pincer grip needed to control a pencil. We use these in our school in California for our young children but the older children love working with them too.
Stacking and Sorting Bowls – A great way to help a child in learning colors, practicing counting, sorting, and imagining!
Tool Belt – A favorite of boys and girls in our classrooms and a super fun thing to have around the house too. Children love working alongside mom and dad building things. We like to get a big tree stump and halfway hammer in several nails on top of the stump, allowing the children to put the tool belt on and hammer away. As they get older, they begin to learn how to control the hammer better and can start building simple projects.
Montessori Lock Box – These are always so much fun! Children will play for hours locking and unlocking these doors. They will also use them to hide things in so if something comes up missing, check there first. :)
Magnetic Building Tiles – These magnetic tiles are great for the imagination and fine motor control. Fun for the whole family!
Shopping Cart – This was a winner with Emery from day one! She loves pushing it around and loading up with all of her “treasures” in the cart while she is shopping around the house.
Teepee – This is a perfect place to use as a reading corner or a special area for relaxing, taking a nap, spending quiet time or talking to friends and parents. Every three year old needs a teepee!
Cleaning Set – Children just want to do what adults are doing so put them to work cleaning and organizing with this cute cleaning set! This is Practical Life at its best!
Balance Board – This is such a great material. We love our balance board. This one is made exceptionally well and is very beautiful. Great for developing motor skills and natural balance and can be used in a variety of ways: as a seesaw, boat, tunnel, bridge, rocker and slide. Your child’s imagination is the limit!
River Stone Set – Go over the river and through the woods on stones toward learning! Kids will learn coordination, balance, and depth perception as they hop from stone to hilltop, great for indoor and outdoor use!
PlasmaCar – Another family favorite! Your child will love zooming around the house or outdoors with this fun PlasmaCar!
Art Easel – It is always fun to have an art easel available for your child. Drawing, painting and even writing on chalkboards are an important part of your child’s development. This art easel has it all. A chalkboard on one side, a paper roller on top and a magnetic board on the other side. Great storage underneath and don’t you just love this color?
Indoor Trampoline – We know our kids have energy to burn! This is a great indoor trampoline for working out their whole body. They will develop better fitness, balance, and coordination. If you have a long winter ahead like we do, this might just be a lifesaver!

We hope you will try some of these great products for your children! Let us know how they like them!

-Barbara, Rachel and Kayla

“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!