The Life of a Running Momma: Weekly Learning Theme: Birthday

We had so much fun with our birthday learning theme last year, read about it here, that I was really looking forward to doing the theme again this year. The great thing about having a week devoted to learning and play related to birthdays was that I had written down everything we did last year. It helped me remember some of our fun that I'd like to turn into traditions that I otherwise may have forgotten about. I really enjoy celebrating Carter and telling him all about the day he arrived in our lives!

Listed below are the objectives I am focusing on for the themed weeks. I have updated our objectives a second time because I felt like we were ready to focus on something new. I plan to continue to implement activities to practice and reinforce our previous objectives while putting more emphasis on our new objectives. Some of them won't necessarily be targeted with specific activities during our weeks, but I wanted to list them to help me remember to practice them continually. The highlighted objectives are ones Carter received exposure to during our theme this week:

Continue to improve fine motor skills and drawing (specifically I'm looking for him to be able to copy a circle and a square as well as draw a person with 2-4 body parts).
Understand same and different.
Accurately tell stories as well as retell the story from a book.

Use age appropriate scissors.
Develop a better understanding of time (for example, be able to describe when things happen using morning, afternoon, night)

Group objects based on a category (sort by defining feature).

Count and understand what the numbers mean.

Activities/Movement:

One of the first things we did during the week was get out and play with Carter's wooden birthday cake set. Man, does he love this toy! It was a great garage sale find. He enjoyed serving up the cake and singing Happy Birthday.

To make a sensory bin I pulled out old scraps of construction paper and had Carter help me rip them up to make confetti. I used confetti as the base for his sensory bin and then added party hats, party blowers, a couple of balloons, 3 candles, and some bright colored pom poms. I was surprised one of the first things Carter did when he played with the bin was put on a party hat. Elise enjoyed playing with the sensory bin as well. I took the pom poms and put them in an ice cube tray so she could practice pinching and pulling them out and she did a great job! On Carter's birthday we used the confetti in his sensory bin to dump out onto him right at 5:58, the time he was born.

Making confetti.
On Carter's birthday I surprised him by having balloons blown up and on the floor in the play room when he woke up. He and Elise played with them for quite a while in the morning and Elise was actually crawling toward them. Then later in the day I used them for some learning activities. I had purposely blown up 2 balloons of each color: one small and the other large. I grabbed the red balloons and told Carter they were the same because they were both red but they were different because they were different sizes. Then I pulled a few more balloons and had him compare them. I grabbed a couple that were the same size but different colors and he was quick to pick up on that. Then I let him group them and he chose to group them by size. Once they were grouped we counted how many were in each group.

The night before Carter's birthday I hung streamers in his doorway. He had a blast running in and out of his room to make them blow in the breeze. I put Elise down by them and she rolled over to play with them and was even strong enough to rip on of the streamers down!

Carter had wanted to help decorate for his party and did this in his room.

We measured Carter on his special growth chart that his Gma and Gpa used for Ty and Paul growing up. It was so much fun to tell him he was a little less than an inch taller than his daddy was at 3 years old and a little more than that taller than his Uncle Paul was. I showed him each of their heights on the chart and we compared them. Then I cut a piece of yarn to be the same size as him. I also cut yarn for Elise and myself. I had Carter put our pieces of yarn in order from shortest to longest. Then he used his yarn to compare his height to different items in our house. He liked standing next to objects to check and then using his yarn by laying it down on the ground to compare that way. He was pretty good at estimating whether he was taller than different objects before he checked his guess using his yarn.

I asked Carter questions about himself that I plan to do each year so we can see how he grows and changes. It was a lot of fun to hear his answers. To read the full interview, check out this post.

Before Carter's party I told him stories from his first and second birthday party and showed him pictures of each party. I also showed him a picture of himself on his first birthday, second birthday, and then third birthday after he woke up from a nap on his birthday. We talked about how he looked the same and how he looked different.

The picture collage I made with the picstich app to show Carter.

On his birthday I told him the story of the day he was born. He loves to hear his and Elise's birth story and has even asked to hear the story of the day Ty was born and I was born. I know enough of the story of my birth I can tell him a decent story, but I don't know quite as many details about Ty's. It was so neat that he chose to go to a playground right across the street from the hospital where he was born because I pointed it out and told him that was where he was born. As we got to the playground I told him at that time on the day he was born his daddy and I were walking the halls of the hospital. Then as we left to head home, I told him it was about the time his Oma and Opa arrived at the hospital.

Playing at the playground on his birthday.

Carter riding on the front of the stroller to our car with the hospital he was born at in the background.

After Carter's party I had him tell me about his favorite part of the party. He said it was the cake and drew a picture of it. I was impressed he drew the cake yellow and then added a brown mane for the cupcake mane around the cake.

Craft:

I thought it would be fun to have Carter write a book about himself and then illustrate it. I asked him what he wanted each page to say and wrote down what he said. Then I read each sentence to him and he illustrated the page. I've been noticing that he is really confident drawing circles and the letters C and O (because they are pretty much circles). He isn't quite as confident with other shapes and tends to shy away from trying them. On the page about trains he drew a wheel. When I suggested he try making a rectangle as the train to go with the wheel, he said he just wanted a wheel. His picture of Harper was awesome and I loved listening as he pointed out her body parts. The picture of Elise he said she was making a sad face. My absolute favorite page was the picture he drew of himself, it was awesome! One of the activities I had listed to do was to have him draw a picture of himself and we skipped it since we covered it with his book illustrations.
Once again this year we got Carter a shirt to decorate for his party and to wear on his birthday. I used painter's tape to make a 3 in the middle and then he painted around it. The three was much more difficult to make than the 2 had been last year! I had to cut small strips of tape to make the humps. I'm looking forward to making a 4 next year, straight lines will be easy! Carter was so proud of his shirt and when people asked him if I made it for him, he was quick to say he made it all by himself!
Last year I had Carter color paper and then I cut it into quarters to use as thank you notes. This year I had scraps that were already the size of a quarter piece of paper. That made it a little tricker to get Carter to decorate them all because he'd only do one at a time so it took forever. I also pulled out stickers so he could decorate them that way. I would tell him who a thank you note was for and what present they had given him. Then he'd tell me what to write on the card. It was cracking me up because on a few he wanted me to write "Jingle Bells" at the end!

Decorating a thank you note with stickers.

Special Snack:

Carter got to choose dinner on his birthday. He picked macaroni and cheese and I made my great grandma's recipe. Then he picked blueberries as the side and opted out of a vegetable for the day. I allowed that since it was his birthday. He also chose the birthday cake he wanted to make on his birthday and decorated it himself. This year he wanted a purple cake (so we dyed it) and he chose orange funfetti frosting, gummy minions, candy cane kisses, and Kit Kats to top it off.

Make Believe:

We made birthday cakes out of Play Doh and even added candles to them. I would sing Carter Happy Birthday and he would pretend to blow out his candles. Then he asked if he could really blow out the candles and requested I put fire on them. I did and he loved it. Elise also got some good practice with her fine motor skills as she sat in my lap and practiced grasping the candles and pulling them out of the cake.

Songs:

Of course we sang Happy Birthday a lot. My parents always sang us a Tom Chapin birthday song when we were little so I also sang it to Carter. It goes like this:

Happy birthday, happy birthday, we love you.

Happy birthday

And may all your dreams come true.

When you blow out the candles

One light stays aglow.

That's the lovelight in your eyes where'er you go.

I also sang Carter his special song I made up when he was a baby and have revised it as he has gotten older. It now goes like this:

Who's a big boy, who's a big boy,

Who's a big boy, Carter Ty.

Who's a big boy, who's a big boy,

Apple of his mommy's eye.

It continues on with different family members inserted in place of mommy in the last line.

Field Trip/Interactive Experience:

We had so much fun with Carter's birthday party. Three of his best friends were able to come to the party and he had a blast playing with them. He also really enjoyed blowing out his candles, eating cake, and opening presents.