birthday poems · gifts · poetry

Birthday Poems Instead of Presents

Stacey Shubitz

I don’t buy gifts.
I don’t bake cupcakes.
I don’t create Happy Birthday Certificates.

Instead I hand-make a birthday card for each of my students, decorate it with stickers, ribbons, etc. and then attach a birthday poem to it. I think that it makes a nicer gift than anything else I’ve handed out in the past. I always attach a published poet’s poem. However, I’m thinking that next year I’ll try writing my own birthday poems for my students, thanks to some inspiration from the Love to Know Website. Click on this link to get some great ideas for writing your own birthday poems for your students.

Some samples of the cards I made today (for the December and January birthdays):

Want to get started giving gifts of poetry on kids’ birthdays? Here are a few sites that have great birthday poems:
Birthday Joys
Here Be Limerick Poems
Nancy’s Teacher Resources
Poem Hunter

I think this quote from Richard L. Evans sums up this post better than I can: “Children will not remember you for the material things you provided but for the feeling that you cherished them.”

Published by Stacey Shubitz

I am a literacy consultant who focuses on writing workshop. I've been working with K-6 teachers and students since 2009. Prior to that, I was a fourth and fifth-grade teacher in New York City and Rhode Island. I'm the author of Craft Moves (Stenhouse Publishers, 2016) and the co-author of Jump Into Writing (Zaner-Bloser, 2021), Welcome to Writing Workshop (Stenhouse Publishers, 2019), and Day By Day (Stenhouse, 2010). I live in Central Pennsylvania with my husband and children. In my free time, I enjoy swimming, doing Pilates, cooking, baking, making ice cream, and reading novels.

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