Kindergarten Celebrates 100

 

The kindergarten students have been anticipating the 100th Day of School for a very long time. One friend even said, "It felt like a 100 years to wait!" Since the first day of school, the kindergarten  mathematicians have been keeping track of the days on our one hundreds chart and by a countdown of  place value with straws being added to the ones, tens and, finally today, the hundreds column. Be sure to ask your child how many groups of ten equal 100!

Counting 100 items for our "100" Museum

                                  

To be ready for the big day, the class also practiced counting to 100 by skip counting 2's, 5's and 10's. During the past week, items were carefully selected and counted at home for our "100"museum in the classroom. During the day the students figured out a variety of ways to count their items, deciding which way was faster, slower or even easier for some of the items would not stay in place and even rolled!

If I had $100, I would buy a nice
crocodile and it could sleep in my guest bed.

If I had $100, I would buy 100 ice cream cones.

  

Our celebration of 100 also had the students using their imaginations as they thought of what they would buy if they had $100. It was interesting to see what the value of a dollar could buy in a kindergartner's mind! Below are just a few of their thoughts.

 If I had $100, I would:

• buy a chocolate lab
• want to be in the Nutcracker
• buy some toy rangers
• get an expensive genie bottle
• buy a $100 fish
• go to New York with my little sister
• buy 100 watermelons for my family
• buy 4 puppies or 100 puppies
• go to Paris
• go to the bank and then go buy pizza to eat

If I had $100, I would put it in the bank!

If I had $100, I would go to Paris with Meadow.

        I wish I could eat 100 jelly beans.

After eating a special pizza lunch for our celebration of 100,  each child imagined eating a 100 of anything they wanted, and it was even guaranteed that it would not cause a stomach ache! Some of the delicious ideas are noted below.

If I could have 100 of anything, I would eat:

• 100 Swedish fish
• 100 pieces of sushi 
• 100 pieces of pizza
• 100 gum packs
• 100 jelly beans
• 100 ice cream cones
• 100 red Nerds
• 100 pieces of grape gum
• 100 candy apples and red apples
• 100 watermelons

If I had $100, I would buy chocolate almonds.

The joy of exploring the number 100 was evident throughout the day and the students have asked to continue working with this very special number! We have so many activities to celebrate the wonderful number 100 that our work will definitely spill over into the next few days. Our plans include drawing pictures of what one might look like at 100 years of age, building a collaborative 100 block structure and keeping track of our count with tally marks, using the hundreds chart to figure out what numbers, big and small, can be added together to make 100, and putting together the challenge of a 100 hundred piece puzzle. The number 100 has given us numerous opportunities to integrate and support developing math skills and concepts of number sense, place value, and addition while also integrating literacy, artistic and collaborative experiences.