Image of three creative and colorful cakes
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Past to Present,

The History of Birthday Cake

Learn the sweet story of this special food. 

By Meg Richardson
From the September 2023 Issue

Learning Objective: Learn how the tradition of eating birthday cakes came to be.

Lexiles: 460L
Guided Reading Level: J
DRA Level: 16-18
Vocabulary: tradition, dyes
Featured Skill: Text Features, Key Details,
Topic: Social Studies,
Common Core Standards
  • RI2.1 Key details RI.2.4 Vocabulary RI.2.5 Nonfiction text features RI.2.10 Read grade-2-appropriate informational text SL.2 Participate in conversations about grade-2 texts L.2.4.a Use sentence-level context as a clue to a word’s meaning
TEKS Standards
  • Social Studies (12) Culture. The student understands ethnic and/or cultural celebrations. The student is expected to: (A) identify the significance of various ethnic and/or cultural celebrations (13) Science, technology, and society. The student understands how science and technology have affected life, past and present. The student is expected to: (A) describe how science and technology have affected communication, transportation, and recreation (16) Social studies skills. The student communicates in written, oral, and visual forms. The student is expected to: (C) create and interpret timelines for events in the past and present

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It’s your birthday! You get to blow out candles. You get to make a wish. Then you get to eat cake. Yum!

Birthday cakes are such a fun tradition. A tradition is a way of celebrating. Traditions are passed down from older people to younger people. Where did the tradition of birthday cake come from?

Cakes for Kids 

It all started about 600 years ago. People in Germany made birthday cakes for kids. The cakes had candles. Kids ate the cakes with their families.

These cakes weren’t very sweet. They were more like bread. That’s because sugar was expensive. Sugar is what makes cake sweet. 

Later, German people came to the United States. They brought birthday cakes with them. Other people thought birthday cakes were fun. They started making birthday cakes too! 

Happy Birthday

About 100 years ago, two sisters wrote the song “Happy Birthday.” Everyone loved it. They started writing the words Happy Birthday on cakes. They used colorful frosting. 

Back then, people used dyes from plants to give the frosting colors. They made pink, green, and even blue frosting from plants! 

Birthday Cakes Today 

Ewing Galloway/UIG/Bridgeman Images

Today there are many different kinds of birthday cakes. There are ice cream cakes, rainbow cakes, cakes that look like animals, and more! What kind of cake do you like on your birthday?

Birthday Cake Timeline

Nosey Illustrations by Lizzie Renaud; Serhiy Stakhnyk/Alamy Stock Photo (Animal Cake); Ewing Galloway/UIG/Bridgeman Images (Pink Cake); Dorling Kindersley ltd/Alamy Stock Photo (Football Cake); Shutterstock.com (All Other Images)

600 years ago: Germans made birthday cakes for kids.

100 years ago: People made colorful frosting for cakes.

Today: There are so many kinds of birthday cakes! 

video (1)
Slideshows (1)
Activities (3)
Skills Activities
Answer Key (1)
video (1)
Slideshows (1)
Activities (3) Download All Quizzes and Activities
Skills Activities
Answer Key (1)

More About the Article

Implementation

Small group; whole group; independent reading

Social Studies Focus

Long ago and today

Step-by-Step Lesson Plan
Download the Lesson Plan

Pairings and Text Connections

From the Storyworks 2 archive:

  • "The History of Tacos" (December/January 2022): Search tacos in our search bar. This article gives the history of another delicious food: tacos. Students compare how the histories of the two foods are alike and different.

Before-Reading Resources

Text Preview Bookmarks: (10 minutes)

  • Kids can cut out the nonfiction bookmark and use it to preview the text.

Suggested Reading Focus

Nonfiction text features (20 minutes)
  • Point out the blue bar on the right side of the page. Do students know what this is? Hint: It says in the blue headline. (It’s a timeline.)
  • Explain that a timeline shows the order in which things happened. You can see how long ago each thing happened on the blue arrow.

After-Reading Skills Practice (15 minutes for each activity)

  • Quiz: Comprehension check
  • Design a Birthday Cake: Writing: Students can write about and draw their ideal birthday cake!

Text-to-Speech