The 100th Day of School Celebration

We did several activities from this unit I created (hurry and grab it, it’s only 1.60 until Wednesday).  A few days before the big day, I sent home a letter (included in the packet) to parents.

I made an extra copy of this form for myself.  When parents signed up, I put their child’s name next to the item.  As students brought in their item, I highlighted it, just to help me stay organized.  If you’re low on copy paper like myself, I just e-mailed this to my parents and they responded back.  

While students were working on centers, I set up the snacks.  I put each item in one bowl.  If you can zoom in, I put the # of snacks on a post-it,  of the am quantity they were suppose to take.  I had to do this this year because a few parents forgot their snacks and I had to improvise.  Instead of bringing in small pretzel sticks, a parent brought in massive bavarian ones.  They’re yummy, but there wouldn’t be enough for each child so for that bowl, I put a number “2” and had the students count by 5s.  Grab one pretzel, “5.”  Grab another, “10.”

Once the snack bags were filled up, students ate them while they worked on their centers.  I just printed everything from my packet and stapled it.  This made it super easy for me because students worked on the packet whenever they finished centers or other assignments.

The MOST favorite activity of the day was the aging photobooth app.  I just downloaded it to my phone, took some photos using props I had leftover from a Target photo prop box I bought at Christmas.

Let me just say, this was a huge hit.  I played around with app over the weekend and printed the photos in black and white at school.  I’m so out of ink and figured it would be easy and my kids were still happy.

How adorable are they???  You should have seen the look in their sweet faces when I passed them out. I think they are officially scared to be 100 years old.

They added their photo onto the “100 Years Old” page from their 100th day packet.  If you don’t use the aging app, just have your kiddos draw a photo of what they think they will look like when they’re 100.

While the students were working on their packet, I showed them a quick slideshow from iphoto and showed them the entire class’ photos.  I have never heard so much laughter, it just melted my heart.

I set the timer for 5 minutes and the students spread out around the room and completed the exercise assignment.  They loved it and I think I’ll keep this one around for a brain break.

After lunch, we made our 100 day hats.  Students cut out the template (which I copied on colorful paper).  While they were cutting, I had students come up and I measured a sentence strip around their head, staple, and repeat.

I gave the students the choice of how they wanted to label their sentence strip with the above choices.  I teach a 1/2 class so I’m always finding ways to differentiate.

(sorry about the sunshine)

It was a short day and we were running out of time so I had to encourage them to work quickly.  Remember the snacks from earlier, well, there were lots of leftovers in each bowl.  So throughout the day, to bribe encourage students to finish, I’d choose different students to grab a bowl of leftovers for their hard work.  It’s amazing how hard students will work when food is involved.

Ok, back on track.  Students completed a hundreds chart and then colored in the patterns as they skip counted by 2s, 5s, and 10s.  There’s another version in my packet where students have to color the even and odd numbers.

So what else did we do? We did a lot in 100 seconds (to reinforce how long or how short 100 minutes really is)

It was truly a fun day and I’m so glad I have been able to watch my students grow over these 100 days. We are more than half way done, woo hoo!!!

Win my hundreds day packet by entering the giveaway today!