100 Days Smarter

We just celebrated our 100th Day of School this past week - a big deal in kindergarten. We get the 3 classes together and rotate around for several activities. This year, we also let the kids wear their PJ's to school.

I thought I'd share some of our 100 Day activities that the kids loved:

The 100 hat - the kids glued cut out numbers to make 100 on a sentence strip then decorated them however they liked with markers. We just stapled the strips around their heads. Star Wars themes were popular with the boys. I realized as they got into this that I used white numbers and strips - not the best idea for contrast. Next year, I'll change it up.

Top Row: Estimating which bag is holding 100 items. There was a lot of discussion around this. The next 2 pictures are 100 pieces of snack. The table is laid out with 10 different items (cheerios, popcorn, m&m's, skittles, chocolate chips, pretzels, raisins, etc) and the kids put 10 of each item into the bag. They are always amazed at how little there is in the bag and relish at eating each item.

Middle Row: Counting by 5's to 100 Hide and Seek. In the hall, we put post-its using 2 different colors. The post-its have 5-100 by 5's on them (5, 10, 15, etc.) The kids look for a number and then color in the corresponding square on their worksheet. Some try to find them in order, some do it as they find them. It becomes a good group project and is very independent.

Bottom Row: The store is probably the favorite activity. The kids make 100¢ anyway they can (we provide sheets divided into 10¢ intervals to help with the counting). They then trade the 100¢ for $1 and get to "buy" something at the store. The 100 Grand Bars are always a favorite. The last picture is of the 100 exercises in the hallway. A teacher leads the kids through 10 different exercises done 10 times each.


Some other activities:
*Everyone bring in 100 items in a sandwich zip lock and then graphed them. My personal favorite was the 100 Barbie shoes!
*We each wrote 2 reasons why they love our school and we added them to a bulletin board.
*The activity that did not work too well was the "I Can Read 100 Words" book. This is a good idea, but did not work during this free-form day. It will be better for a normal center.

Please feel free to share your 100 Day of School ideas! If you have any questions about ours, I'd be happy to answer.