Don't BEE Bugged By Birthdays!

Have you ever been looking for a certain computer file when you happen to stumble upon another file and then you think to yourself, hey this would be a great idea to share on my blog? No? [crickets chirping]. Well anyway, in the past I have gone WAY overboard trying to make my students' birthdays their most special day EVER. What I have learned after my six years of teaching is that, THAT kind of thinking is why teachers get burnt out so easily. Therefore, in an effort to dissolve my disillusionment about what a good teacher is or does, I made an easy way to say "Happy Birthday" using this fun, inexpensive and EASY idea!

First, I found some great inspiration from the web about making flowers using giant pixie sticks. Then, I used some flower graphics and changed them to go along with my BEE theme. Voila! I made the flowers before school started and stuck them in a vase to give my room some added color AND it created extremely high anticipation from my students.

In my class, when a student celebrates his/her birthday, we make a booklet for him/her. The cover is colored by the birthday student while the rest of the class works on his/her cards. This year, I created a smaller booklet so I wouldn't feel guilty about using soooo much paper. :) I saw this cute birthday poem from First Grade Fresh and adapted it to suit my needs.

I left some of the words blank and then below I added (choose a noun) or (choose an adjective) to evoke a Mad Lib feel. I can't wait to use it this year! Since I have shared a lot of FREE resources lately, I decided to offer this download for FREE as well! You can find it here. Enjoy!

Please let me know what you think! Your feedback is greatly appreciated! :)