100 Days Day
Each year in the kindergarten classes, the children keep track of the number of days they have attended school. At the beginning of the year, the teachers ask the children if they think they will be in school for 100 days. The children never think they will make it to that huge number of days in school! Students tally the number of days in school by placing a straw in the Number cans—one straw represents one day in school.
The
Number cans are labeled Ones, Tens, and Hundreds. These cans help teach the
children place value, with Ones on the right, Tens to the left of Ones, and
Hundreds to the left of Tens. On the tenth day in school students bundle
the 10 straws and move that bundle to the Tens can. This goes on for each
consecutive group of tens.
The
class also records the number of days in school on a number line. The children
can refer to the Number cans to determine the correct way to write the number
(how many tens and how many ones and in which place). The children also use
the number line to see patterns in numbers. They circle numbers ending in
5 or 0, and then use this number line to learn to count by 5's and 10's.
The teachers also use the straws to help students work together to learn concrete addition and subtraction. For example, one child asks a classmate to take out 23 straws from the Number cans, and then he may ask his classmate to take away 13 straws. Finally he asks "how many are left?", and his classmate manipulates the straws until he comes up with the answer. This is very sophisticated math, but the children are able to do it because they have created and used the materials daily since the first day of school.
As the classes approach 100 days in school, the teachers do many activities to reinforce “How much is 100?”
Each
class does different activities. This year, one class made 100 faces, with
20 children in that class they had a natural division problem: how many faces
did each child have to make? This is where the counting by 5's came in handy!
Another class had 21 children make a poster of hand prints with five fingers each, making 105 fingers.
One favorite activitiy is "When I am 100," where the children speculate what their life might be when they turn that mighty age.
Both classes celebrated with a cake (a rarity at Nutfield) topped by — of course — 100 candles.
100 Day is an eagerly awaited day at Nutfield. Of course each year on day
101 there are a few disappointed children who thought 100 day was the last
day of school!
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Here are scenes from one Kindergarten class's 100 Day event in 2006.