Birthday Celebration Activities for Toddlers
By LAURIN BRAINARD Updated Jan. 4, 2024
What could be more special than spending an entire week celebrating your child’s birthday?!?! I created this set of Birthday Celebration Toddler School activities to do just that! Not only will you be able to have family fun celebrations with your little one, but you can also create a themed week of learning activities that are all designed with birthday themes.
Your child will be having so much fun decorating paper cakes, adding candles to pretend cupcakes, and playing with dough, that they may even forget that they are learning! I hope these activity ideas help you create an extra special week for toddler birthdays!
Activities Included in this Birthday Theme:
This unit is made up of 11 activities that include:
- literacy/language
- vocabulary
- sensory bins
- math activities
- fine motor activities
- art activities
- science activity
Kick Off Your Child’s Birthday Celebration
To begin our birthday celebration week, we will be reading our Happy Birthday vocabulary book. This book includes a variety of pictures and vocabulary words that they may see at a birthday celebration. You can grab all the plans and printables in this Birthday Unit right here:
Birthday Sensory Bins for Toddlers
Nothing brings me back to my childhood faster than sprinkles on a cupcake! So for this sensory bin, we are giving our little ones the opportunity to dig their fingers into a sensory bin filled with sprinkles! To set up this bin, just fill up a bin with rainbow sprinkles and add some real birthday candles to the bin.
We paired this bin with our Candle Cupcakes to work on math skills. To help your children learn to count, you will want to point to the number and help your child say the name. Then, have your child grab one candle at a time from the bin and count up to the number. You can even have your child pretend to blow out the candles when they finish adding the correct amount!
I love watching my little ones pull tissue paper and crinkled paper out of gift bags. They love the sensory experience, so I added a similar experience to this sensory bin! To set up this birthday bin, just fill a bin with crinkled paper. Give your child lots of opportunities to play with the paper as they run their fingers through and hear the noises it makes.
We paired this sensory filler with our Birthday Cupcake Alphabet Mats. You can add the cupcake tops to the bin. Then, your child can pull out one cupcake topper at a time and find the match on their cupcake wrapper workmat. This is a great way to introduce your child to letter names without having to know the name of each letter.
Birthday Math Activities for Toddlers
How old is your child turning this year? This Birthday Candle Counting Activity is a great way to visually show a number to your child. To begin, show your child one cupcake. Have them match a real candle to the cupcake and count each candle as they add it. Make sure to celebrate how old your child is with a matching birthday cupcake!
Toddler Fine Motor Activities
Dot markers are one of our favorite tools for building fine motor skills! They help to develop hand control in your child’s tiny little hands as they dot inside specific areas on an activity. Plus, they are so much fun!! This Cake Dot Marker Printable is such a fun way to celebrate a birthday and can even be used as a card for family members!
Help Your Toddler Learn About Emotions
Giving our children opportunities to recognize the types of emotions we feel is so important, so we created these birthday cupcakes to do just that! You can pull out one card each day and have your child use Playdoh to show the emotion.
You can even act it out by showing the emotion on our faces and through body language. Then, ask your child how these emotions make them feel. I always like to pair a positive emotion such as happy or excited along with a mad or sad emotion. It’s a great way to teach how these emotions are opposites.
Grab All the Plans and Printables You Need!
I hope you are feeling inspired to have a week of learning through birthday celebration themed activities! You can download this Birthday Celebration Toddler Unit and make it easy to plan some fun activities. It includes 11 lesson plans and all the Birthday themed printable materials you will need to make teaching your toddler as easy as possible.
If you are looking for an entire year of fun for you and your little ones, then check out my Complete Toddler School Curriculum Bundle for all the plans and printables you need for an entire year of learning!
I hope you enjoy playing and learning with your little ones this week! Feel free to send me an Insta message at @theprimarybrain if you have any questions about how to get started teaching your little ones!
Looking for more activities you can do with your little ones? Check out these blog posts:
FREE Toddler Curriculum Map - 40 Weeks of Plans
If you are looking for practical ways to set up a daily routine for your little ones, then grab my FREE toddler school guide here:
This post may contain Amazon affiliate links. I earn a small commission each time someone makes a purchase through one of my affiliate links, which helps to support The Primary Brain blog. As always, I only recommend products that I love and all ideas shared are my own.
Written on January 4th, 2024 by Laurin Brainard