Walk Around the Sun: A Montessori Birthday Celebration

Yesterday we did our annual Walk around the Sun for our oldest daughter. This is a fun Montessori birthday celebration that emphasizes the passage of time and celebrates the life of the child. It’s a great cultural lesson that covers history and science concepts. It’s so special and fun! This is our second walk around the sun in our homeschool preschool.

We used our seasonal mat, a sun cut out of felt (it was just a quick circle but I am planning to make it “prettier” soon!), a picture of the earth on a popsicle stick, pictures of our oldest from 0-4, and some extra pictures from this past year. We also did her personal timeline. I will do a second post about that activity!

Here’s how we did this in our home:

I held up the picture of the earth and said, “This is the earth. This is where we live.” I pointed to the sun cut out and said, “This is the sun. It’s the center of our solar system. The earth travels around the sun. It takes the earth a year to go all the way around the sun. Would you like to sing a song about that?”

There are several songs that you can use for this. We sang this to the tune of “The Farmer in the Dell”

“The earth goes around the sun, The earth goes around the sun, It takes a year to go around, The earth goes around the sun.”

We sang that a couple times, then I said, “Addison has gone around the sun four times. When she was born, she looked like this (hold up a newborn photo). Addison, can you carry the earth and walk around the sun one time? After she did her walk, I held up a picture of her at that age and marked the year on the timeline.

I continued this until she had walked around the sun four times. At four, we added more pictures from that year. Special moments or milestones we had picked out. Once those were shared, we each took a moment to share something we loved about Addison and to tell her how much we loved her.

We love this sweet tradition that we have added to our home. We always wait until lunch when Daddy is home from work to do our walk around the sun. Have you tried this Montessori birthday celebration in your home?

To prep for this, I read the following blogs:

Montessori Birthday Celebration from Living Montessori Now (Round up post FULL of info)

Intro to History on Info Montessori

Intro to Geography on Info Montessori

Celebrating Birthdays the Montessori Way on Leport School’s Blog