Sibling Birth Announcements

Becoming a big brother or sister is a special time in one's life. For those children who celebrate this at a slightly older age, there are ways to make this announcements to their friends and school mates while making them feel special too. Here are some of the ideas that you could use to help them with announcing the birth of their brother or sister:

• Send your child to school wearing their new Big brother or big sister t-shirt. This can be purchased at many gift and novelty shops. You can even buy them at many hospitals. Why not take this a step further and let your child decorate a t-shirt prior to the baby's birth. After the birth they can have the baby's foot prints put on the shirt! Some choose to have the older sibling wear the shirt during the birth and let the nurses put the foot prints on it right away.

• Take a photo of your child holding the new baby. Print it out and allow them to make it into a poster to take to school. This works well for show and tell or for very little children who don't have the skills required to paint or write on their own.

• Make birth announcements on labels on your computer. Take the sticker labels and put them on a piece of construction paper, or allow an older child to do this task. Then have the construction paper hole punched and tie string or ribbon through the hole and to a piece of candy like a sucker. You can buy the "It's a boy!" or It's a girl!" suckers or simply use whatever you have at the store. You might alternatively choose to use a piece of tape or glue to secure a piece of candy like a Hershey's Kiss to the card. This is a great project to keep a sibling occupied after the birth! And they are so proud to hand out their own announcements.

• Make an arts and craft project about babies! Find all the baby magazines that you can, many people get a ton free in the mail. Let your child cut out all the photos of baby related things and babies that they can stand. Show them how to make a collage. This can spark some great discussions of what babies need, prior to birth. It also makes a great project to show off to friends and family. Ultimately it can hang in the baby's room, or even be used as a crib card during a hospital stay.

• Have your older child write about the birth (Even if they weren't there, they can talk about what they were doing and thinking while it was happening.). They can use this as a school project or personal narrative. Be sure to find a suitable photo to go with it.

• If you have birth announcements made up, allow your child to have some of the extras to send to friends and family. If you didn't have any extras, consider allowing your child to place a note with the announcements, talking about being a new big brother or sister.