Hello, Teaching Friends!
Well, one of the most exciting days of the school year is coming up quickly - the 100th Day of School! If you mention it to anyone outside the primary grades (and this is true even more so for anyone outside the school community!), you can get some pretty funny looks! But this "holiday" is really something special, both as a fun day for our kiddos and as a great teaching opportunity for us!
Every school and every teacher has favorite ways to celebrate. For the past few years in our school, the first grades have made the day memorable by inviting our families in for a math celebration. Each of the classrooms becomes a "station". The students parade with their parents to a different classroom every 15 minutes, singing
"We've Been Working in Our Classroom" along the way. (click the link to see it at canteach - I don't know where this great set of lyrics originated, but you can find it in lots of places now). In one of our classrooms, the children worked with their parents on assembling one hundred piece puzzles. In another, they used stickers or bingo dabbers to make 100 dots on headbands. In a third, they played board games with 100 steps.
You'll note the ever-popular fruit loop necklace, still intact for only another moment or two...
All of the teachers were also armed with great books for the BIG DAY, like this favorite.
I love, love, LOVE this book!
It's a great little story for talking about predictions, characters, and stereotypes. Here's a free math activity to go along with it. Get ready to have a classroom hunt for 100 chicks on the loose!
After the classroom rotation, we'd gather together for a 100th Day snack, like 100 carrot sticks. Not so much. More often, it was 100 chocolate chip cookies (back in the pre-allergy days), arranged to form a giant 100.
One of the afternoon activities was Count up, Build It, Count Down! I'd gather piles of various objects, making sure that there were more than 100 of each. The children would work in pairs or small groups (this helps if your space is limited - this project takes space!).
Step 1: The first job was to
count up to exactly 100.
Boy, that's a lot of counting! Check it! How can we make this easier? Groups of ten? Okay! What- you want to try groups of 5? If you insist! :)
(heh, heh... always sneaking in some extra learning!)
Step 2: Use your imagination to
build something with all 100 of your objects. Here are a few that my students made.
"It's a rocket with, like, space stuff."
I couldn't see the plan here, until...
...jeans! They found some very clever ways to use exactly 100 of the buttons.
See the cuffs and the patch? :)
Step 3: Counting Down: Give each group one or two dice (depending on your group's ability and the time you have available. Take turns rolling the die/dice and taking away that many items from your "construction". There are three winners to this game: the player who takes the last piece, the player who took the most pieces, and the player who took the least pieces. I love games with multiple winners!
Here are some ideas for your 100 items: paper clips, pencils, minierasers (yay, Dollar Spot!), safety pins, pennies, Base Ten cubes, Base Ten longs, buttons, cotton balls, dollar store rhinestones (there are usually loads of these for Valentines Day, but you might even find some in post-Christmas clearance!), toothpicks...
Need your kiddos to calm down a bit after all this activity? Put their brains to work solving a riddle like this one for the numbers that surround 100. Kids love solving these elimination riddles!
These riddles are a fun way to explore the numbers surrounding 100, and they'll really put your students' brains to work! Use the cards as a whole class activity with your document camera, give a card to partners to work out together, or (up out of those seats again!) set them up as a Read and Solve Around the Room activity. Recording page and answer key included -
click here to see them at my TPT store!
If you're looking for more, check this giant 100th Day Power Pack! With this set, you'll be set for math centers for the day ... or the week... or even the whole month of the 100th Day!
This is a BIG one, guys, and I'm very excited about it. If you're planning a classroom rotation like we did, or just a great big math fest in your own classroom, this set with its 15 games and activities will have everything you'll need.
Happy 100th Day Teaching!
