Friday, February 19, 2010

100th Day

Today was our 100th day of school.

For those of you who do not teach young children, let me tell you - this is a BIG deal!

We've been counting every day of school since our very first day together. It is a favorite part of Circle Time. The "counters" helper for the day will help count the craft sticks: first we count the ones, and when we reach 10 they get bundled together to make a ten which then goes into the tens jar. Then I go to our number line (small index cards stapled to the wall, blank until I write that day's number on it) and write the number while describing to the kids how I'm writing it (ex. for 31 - "A little curve, then another little curve, and now a big line.") Today we counted our ones, bundled the ten sticks together and put that bundle into the ten jar, and THEN counted all of our tens and bundled them together and placed them in our brand new hundreds jar. Very exciting stuff!

I taught the kids a new song, one that I take no credit for as I found it online with no name attached to it:

100 Days of School sung to The Ants Go Marching 1 By 1

We've all been counting 1 by 1 - Hurrah! Hurrah!
We've all been counting, oh what fun - Hurrah! Hurrah!
We've all been counting 1 by 1,
And now 100 days are done,
Hooray! Today's the 100th day of school!

We started counting up to 10 - Hurrah! Hurrah!
To 20, 30, 40 then - Hurrah! Hurrah!
To 50, 60, 70 then, to 80, 90, now is when,
Hooray! Today's the 100th day of school!

How cute is that?!! After we learned it we began marching around the room, parade-style, as we sang, pumping our fists high in the air each time we shouted "Hurrah!"

It just so happened that our 100th day of school ended up on a Friday, a very busy day in a Jewish preschool. One activity we do every Friday is each child makes their own challah to bring home. Today our challahs were the number 100. We cut everyone's dough into three "snakes" like usual, and then everyone used their snakes to create a 1 and two zeroes.


We also had a special snack. Everyone received a quarter of a graham cracker and one Oreo and used them to create the number 100.

Hard to believe it's been 100 days. Some days the 100 days have seemed to drag on, but most days (luckily) they have flown by.

Any other teachers or parents reading this have any 100 day activities to report?





2 comments:

insomniac ellen said...

is it wrong that I thought the challah looked very phallic?


Holla!
[this is why I could NEVER teach pre-school]

[okay--my word verification is "uriesse"--just sayin']

Oonie said...

Our kindergartener's 100 day celebration was adorable. First, they do the bundles too and every ten days they do the "bundle boogaloo" which is a special dance right there in circle time.
For the 100th day there are usually 100 snacks but this year--too many food allergies, and too close to the Valentine party. So instead he came home with a crown of a schoolhouse in the middle with a 100 on it and school busses with 10, 20, 30, etc. circling the head (all stapled on to a secure paper). They also had "glasses" that they wrote 100 on as many times as they could, and each got a "$100 bill" (a piece of notepad paper) to bring home.
A friend's child had to come up with 100 somethings on a shirt ("leaving us with an ugly shirt" she pointed out, hating the assignment) and 100 somethings. They used the monkeyballs from their yard. So smart!