Kids Wednesday: 100 Days of School

This Monday was my son's 100th day at school.  They have been counting down the whole year and are going to get to that day on the snow make up day so I find it double important.  We decided to do a little pre-100 day celebration on Sunday.

My son already gathered his 100 paperclips to bring into school which he used to make a poster while he was at school.  There were a lot of creative 100 things brought in by his classmates including pennies, shaped pasta, pom pom balls, toothpicks, q-tips, and more.  My son got the assignment and came to the office where he found his first paper clip and declared that was what he wanted to collect.  We went home and pulled out my box of paper clips so that he could pick lots of fun and colorful clips to add to his collection.  He worked on counting by 1's and putting them in piles of ten.  Then, he double checked that he had the right number by counting by 10's.  We put the 100 paper clips in a bag and they went to school.

We went to the library and got out a book that we read earlier in the year which was 100 Days of Cool (MathStart 2) by Stuart J. Murphy.  We loved it before and had a blast reading it again now that we know what 100 days of school means.  The story is great because it has kids dressing up crazy and counting down the days to 100 days of school.

We did a dot marker picture that I got from the dot marker book that we picked up for a quarter at a garage sale.  I know how much those go for new so I was excited to grab that I separated the pages into my letter folders in the basement.  Rainbow Trail: Do-A-Dot Art! Creative Activity Book by Do-A-Dot Art! can be found on Amazon for a little under $6.

The bubble gum machine went straight to get copied so that we could make our bubble gum machine with 100 pieces of gum.  I was going to make one with construction paper but this was so quick and easy that I couldn't turn it down.  We got out the dot markers (purchased at the dollar store) and my son started making his dots.

The final product had a lot of overlapping gumballs as my son pointed out which was okay.  He has 6 dot markers so he decided on his own to use one color to make ten and then move on to the next color.  I couldn't have planned it better if I tried.  He did 10 of each color and checked afterwards by counting by 2's.  Again, his idea but I was super glad that he was double checking his work.  He got the 6 markers done and counted 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 by pointing at the markers.  He told me that he only needed 4 more markers to finish his project and he gave me the others to put away.

I hope that you enjoy some fun ideas for 100 day or whatever day you decide to celebrate.  It is a great way to work on counting through the whole year and you can work on counting by 1's, 2's, 5's or 10's depending on what you want to work on.  Then you can have a nice snack of 100 crackers or cereal for a special treat!