The Montessori Birthday Walk
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One aspect I love about Montessori is the emphasis on making abstract concepts more concrete for children. For birthdays this is done through the Montessori birthday celebration or Montessori birthday walk. In the Montessori birthday walk the child walks around the sun the number of times as they are years old while holding a globe. Everyone sings a song while they walk and stories of their year are told between laps. We did the Montessori birthday walk for our son’s first birthday.
Doing the Montessori birthday walk for a first birthday is a bit different since the child of course does not understand even the more concrete concept of walking around the sun. We still found it a nice way to add meaning to his birthday party without adding expense. The Montessori birthday walk was a meaningful way to remember his first year on earth.
To do the Montessori birthday walk for our son’s first birthday I first created a sun out of felt and hot glue. I am not a big DIYer but all the premade options were pretty pricey. Cutting and hot-gluing the sun was very simple. I also love that we will have this simple sun for future birthday walks as well. I then printed out Yitzchak’s monthly photos and placed them around the sun. We put a flameless candle in the middle.
To start the Montessori birthday walk we held our son and talked about his year. I talked about when he was born and discussed something that happened each month of the year. For example, in his second month we took a big road trip, in his sixth he started solids, and in his seventh he crawled. We let him see the photos. They were not expensive to print so I didn’t worry too much if he messed them up a bit.
I wasn’t sure how this part would go because he is very mobile and loves crawling around. However, he actually really enjoyed looking at the photos with us.
After we talked about his year we continued the Montessori birthday walk by walking around the sun. We purchased a plush globe which we held as we walked. Since Yitzchak cannot walk yet I held him as we walked around the sun.
We walked counterclockwise since the earth goes around the sun counterclockwise. His photos were also arranged counterclockwise. As we walked around we all sung “the earth goes ‘round the sun. The earth goes '‘round the sun. The earth goes ‘round one time and now Yitzchak is one” to the tune of the farmer in the dell. Since we were doing the Montessori birthday walk for a first birthday we only walked around the sun once. For an older child we would then talk about the next year briefly and walk again around the sun, repeating for the number of years the child is old. I probably wouldn’t go as deeply into each year with an older child, but it worked perfectly for the first birthday walk!
The Montessori birthday walk is a simple ceremony but it was a very nice way to add more meaning to the birthday. I look forward to doing it as a yearly celebration. Watch more of our Montessori birthday walk on Youtube here!
