100!

100. One-Hundred. Ciento. 50x2. Half of 200. 100.


That is how many days I have officially survived teaching. I can't believe it, but it is true! Now, I don't remember ever making a big deal out of the "100th Day of School" when I was in elementary school, but boy oh boy do they make a scene out of it now days. There are parties, treats, games, crafts, and anything and everything you can think of dealing with the number 100 (that almost never have any educational benefit other than seeing the number 100 everywhere). Well, because I am a "winger"(and because I had no idea it was the 100th day), I had no special plans for this day and my kids. So in true Erica fashion, I decided to just wing it.

In my Kindergarten class, I had them make paper chains. They each got 10 strips of paper, using the colors of their choice, and we went from there. We I decided that making a chain all the way to 100 was completely unrealistic and I was not ready to take that task on with 6 kindergarten kids. So instead, we made a counting by 10s to 100 chain *educational part #1*. The kids had to then think of a pattern *educational part #2* that they wanted to make with the colors they chose. From there we counted together by 10s to 100 *educational part #3*, and then went on to write each number on each strip of paper *educational part #4, practicing writing :)* Well after we got all of our numbers written, I took them and stapled them together to make a lovely, colorful, educational, paper chain. That was their 100 day celebration activity with Ms. Curp.

Now 2nd grade, I guess I had some kind of lapse in judgment and came up with, what I thought, would be an easy and fun activity for them. Boy was I wrong, thankfully it all worked out. Before I tell you what the activity was, I would like you to keep in mind that I have these kids for an 1.5 hrs, and while that may seem like a lot of time - it was not for this particular last minute activity.

If you couldn't figure it out from the picture, I had the kids come up with 100 things they learned in 100 days. That may not seem like much of a task, but I have a whopping 3 students in my 2nd grade class - so between the 3 of them, they had the daunting task to come up with 100 things they remembered/learned up to this point in my class. I was going back and forth cutting out various shapes to write their memories on (since I had not planned this activity prior to the moment they walked in the door) and I will tell you cutting out 100 shapes is no small task when under a strict time limit! Well I finally got all 100 cut-out, and I was letting the kids write down things they remembered on the paper. Well, cue mistake #2 (next to not planning this out before), my kids are not the best spellers, and the words they were wanting to write, like perimeter, were not easy to figure out... so I was having to spell them out for them one at a time as they yelled out ideas. After each wrote about 10 of their own with my help on spelling, I took over the writing gig (for time's sake) and wrote the next 70 as they came up with them. About an hour and 15 minutes later... we had 100 things we had learned in 100 days :).

Well the next task was to glue all of these on a large sheet of butcher paper so I could hang up and show off the work they were so proud of before the end of the day. We got them all cut-out,  written-out, and glued on in exactly 1.5 hrs. I have never been more proud. During my end of the day 30 min planning period, I went and cut out the letters for the title so people would know what on earth the big paper with random words was about and hung it above. All and all, this project turned out great and I have had so many teachers comment on how much they loved it and how, in a way, it served as a type of review having the kids think back to all the things they have learned and refresh their memories.

I will definitely do this again next year, but with a little planning in advance. I think I will have them come up with one thing they learned at the end of each day for the 1st 100 days, and then by the time that 100th day comes around the corner, all we will have to do is glue those one some paper and hang it up. That sounds much easier, and much less stressful!

Any other bloggers know of any fun activities I could do for this 100 day celebration next year? Would love to hear any ideas, even if you are not a teacher, feel free to leave any suggestions, I am always open to trying new things!