Celebrating 100 Days of School

We recently passed the 100th Day of School. The former first grade teacher in me just can't pass up the chance to celebrate this fun day, so I set up 100th Day centers in the Media Center for Kindergarten and first grade classes.

I have done this for 3 years now (you can read about past years here and here), and have varied it each year, but I think this year was the most successful. I took about 5 minutes to go over the centers and then had students go to their tables to begin the first center rotation.  Each center took about 5 minutes to complete and then we rotated to the next center.  I asked that a teacher or TA stay just for this one day to help out, but you could probably adjust some of the centers to make it work without an extra pair of hands, or maybe recruit a parent volunteer to help out just during your kindergarten and first grade classes, or whichever grade levels you wanted to do these centers with.

Here are the centers I set up:

Center 1:  How long is 100 seconds?

In this center, students sit with their eyes closed for 100 seconds to feel how long that is. Then they race to write their names as many times as they can in 100 seconds and compare with everyone in the group.  I usually have another teacher or TA at this table to help with the timer and to lead the discussion.

Center 2:  What Does 100 Look Like?

In this center, students must decide which container out of 5 contains 100 items.  But here's the kicker...all the containers have 100 items!  I usually man this center and lead the discussion about why each student chose the container that they did and why the container with the 100 gumballs looks like it contains more items than the container with the 100 paperclips.

Thanks to Mary, a fabulous kindergarten coworker and blog author of Sharing Kindergarten for the photo.  =)

Since this center doesn't take very long, I downloaded the AgingBooth app and aged each student's picture (of those who wanted to participate) to see what they would look like when they are 100 years old.  This scared one student in the first group, so after that I started with my picture to show them how it would work and also presented as "Let's see what you will look like when you are a grandmother or grandfather."  No one got upset after that, and most thought it was pretty funny.  Some students said it was gross, but still laughed.  I also aged some of the teachers and the kids really got a kick out of that.

Center 3:  100th Day Bookmarks

You know my kids love bookmarks, so I just had to make this a center this year.  I made both girl and boy bookmarks with a place to show what 100 looks like on the back.  I put out both crayons and markers for them to use.  They loved it...especially the markers.

Center 4:  100 Cup Tower

At this center, students worked together to build a tower with 100 cups.  A few cups have gotten torn, but I have used these same cups for 2 years now, so...not too bad of an investment. They LOVE this center!.

Center 5:  100th Day Puzzle

This was a new center I created this year.  I made a puzzle and divided it into 10 different pieces. I put the numbers from 10 to 100 (by tens) at the bottom of each pieces as a little hint.  I sealed an envelope and laminated it, then cut out and cut it in half to use as a place to keep all of the pieces.  I drew shapes (circle, triangle, square, star, heart) on the back of all the pieces in each set (one shape for each set) in case the pieces got mixed up and I also put the corresponding shape on the envelope to make it easy to organize and clean up.

I am working on updating my 100th Day pack on TpT to include the bookmarks and puzzle and to redo the clipart a bit, but for now the 100th Day Center pack on TpT includes centers 1 and 2 and a different version of center 4 in it (100 block tower instead), as well as 7 other centers for a total of 10 centers.

Until then, you can get the bookmarks and puzzle for free by clicking here.

Do you do anything special to celebrate the 100th Day?