Buddies ~ Birthdays

***In September 2011 6 families got together and started Buddies Home School. Each week we meet in each other's home and follow a simple rhythm: movement and music, craft/ baking, snack time, free play and story time. Each part of the session is led by a different family. We are sharing this week's session with you here...***

Today is little S' first Birthday! It is also O's birthday tomorrow so we decided to have a Birthday themed Buddies today.

We did some lovely party circle games for music and movement: 5 Little Speckled Frogs, Ring o' Roses, Hockey Cockey and of course we had to do the Sleeping Bunnies again...

For our craft we made birthday cards. We had thought of making mud cakes out in the garden but the weather was too grotty (even for me) to make everyone go outside. So we raided our craft box and made these sweet little cards instead.

It never ceases to amaze me how much pleasure children get from the mere act of cutting paper and sticking.

They sat beautifully and calmly at the table working away on their creations.

We actually ended up having to hurry them on so we could have our snack.

As this was our first Buddies Birthday we had the pleasure today of inventing our birthday tradition (Annika!!). We wanted to keep it simple and calm. We also have lots and lots of over lap Birthdays (kids who have birthday's in the same week) and we really wanted to be able to celebrate them all. So we decided that the Birthday child would wear our special Buddies Birthday Crown (or keep taking it on and off in little S' case lol) and we would light the appropriate number of candles in a ring and sing Happy Birthday for that child.

We could then pass the crown and the ring on to the next child who would also be sung to.

(isn't this just the most beautiful picture ~ and little girl!!)

We also wanted to share a cake together. We also thought it a good idea that the birthday child's mummy bring the cake and that it be kept very simple. It was a lovely little birthday celebration for 2 very special little (or should that be big?) girls.

We tried to do a bit of planning for the up coming weeks during the kid's free play time. But we had a full house of kids (who had just had a slice of cake and no fresh air) and it got too noisy and rowdy so we cut our planning time and gathered to read the story.

This is the story Flo brought for us. She was aorried that it wasn't going to work. She was worried that the book was too small and that the story was too calm for the high spirits of the group. But when she started to tell it to us (the story itself is in French so she just told it in her own words) a magic settled over the kids.

It is a story about a little baby in her mummy's tummy who just didn't want to come out. All of her family try to persuade her to come out but she refuses only coming out in the end to get a kiss from her daddy (and rest of the family). It was really nice to end our birthday celebreations with a story about birth.

Happy Birthday S and Happy Birthday O :-)