100th Day FUN!

We celebrated our 100th day of school last week. I paired up with our fabulous grade 1 teacher and we had a day of 100-themed literacy, math and craftivity centers. Kids were separated into five groups with 8-9 students in each. Grade threes were our leaders; they did a fantastic job. Each group spent 30 minutes at each center. We started centers after our literacy block and kids completed five rotations. It was a very, very exciting day-made more so because I mixed up the schedule. I accidentally overlapped two groups on half of their centers...WHOOPS! Luckily, I teach with wonderful people (kids included, of course) and everything worked out just fine. We scrapped the rotation schedule and just went with a clockwise rotation instead!

Ms L had a limbo line, 100 year-old-person art, and other 100 theme activities in her room. I had 100 Lego, 100 Froot Loops necklace, 100 picture and a 100 steps estimation/task (which I TOTALLY underestimated).

The 100 Lego center was a crowd-pleaser. The night before our celebration, I counted out three piles of 100 Lego. Then, I put each pile into large size Dollarama-brand ziploc baggies. Kids worked in pairs or triads to build a structure from the Lego. Everyone was engaged...awesomeness.

I used 100 charts for the 100 Froot Loop necklace task. Kids first had to use the chart to make sure that they had 100 pieces of cereal. They then strung the Froot Loops onto string. The first group tried to make a pattern, but this turned out to be too hard to do in the 30 minute block. It was interesting to see that some kids thought HUGE piles of cereal would be needed for their 100 chart, while others thought a small handful would be enough.

sorting out cereal

starting to string it on 

lovely, delicious necklace is almost finished

As a home-to-school connection, each student in my class was instructed to bring a bottle filled with 100 things. I bought a case of water and sent home a bottle with each child along with the instructions for this activity (which I found at Read-Write-Think). MARVELOUS! I love, love, love this idea. Kids hid their bottle in a brown paper bag and read three clues about their collection. The class then had three chances to guess it. Objects included; Kibble, toothpicks, beads, spaghetti noodles, cereal, sunflower seeds, chocolate chips, popcan tabs...and more! We ended our day with this task, so it was just our class and not the grade ones. I will definitely do this one again. The day after our party, the kids wrote a reflection about their bottle. They had to include what material they used, why they used it and something about it. We used paper with a bottle embossed on it (once again, thank you Dollarama) for the good copy. Kids sketched a picture of their bottle and I took a photo of each child holding their bottle. We'll be gluing the photo beside the drawing, laminating each reflection sheet, and binding them into a class book.

 100 pieces of Kibble

100 Lego

 And, at the end of the day, I went home and had a looooong nap. Any suggestions for next year? I tried to mix things up and have something for all learners but am thinking that some kind of song could be added?