Celebrating children’s birthdays are so important, so here at Wainwright we wanted to create a system whereby every single child in the academy has a special day dedicated to them every year.
Celebrating a child’s birthday raises their self-esteem – when a child feels celebrated, they also feel loved and meaningful in their academy role. Not only this, but it strengthens academy family bonds – the sense of being together to celebrate something special.
As a child’s birthday approaches, our senior midday supervisor, Mrs Witty, will hand make a card, and Mrs Manion, head chef, will bake an individual birthday cake.
When it’s your child’s birthday they will come to the dinner hall with their queue jump pass, then they will chose a friend to sit with on the golden table which will be decorated in birthday attire – they will even be given a birthday crown to wear. Through this, we hope children will establish social relationships, by inviting a couple of friends, as well as allowing children to relate to other feelings such as companionship and kindness.
When restrictions are lifted and we can sing again, we will play music and all the children in the hall will break out into the happy birthday song. Finally, the birthday girl or boy will get to chose a gift from the birthday box.
A study of memories says that most childhood memories are not really memories, but rather a memory created from a lot of data collected from different sources in an unconscious way, like sensations, smells, and music. Therefore, creating memories from a celebration such as this, will hopefully be something they never forget about their time at primary school. Another huge positive is teaching all our children, the perception of time. Children are not aware of their growth and that is why birthdays are a great way for them to discover the process of growing up.
At Wainwright, we respect all cultures and beliefs and we appreciate that there are some religions that do not celebrate birthdays and this will be respected. Please do not worry if your child’s birthday falls at a weekend or in the school holidays, as they will celebrate their birthday on the Friday before.
