Today was the 100th Day of School! This is one of those days that I sometimes have a hard time getting into, mostly because we always have so many “normal” lessons we still have to get done that the 100th Day ends up being a short celebration. This year I committed to an entire day of activities to celebrate. It was a lot of prep, but it was totally worth it. (In our class, it also happened to be the day of their hot chocolate pajama party, so they really do think it was the BEST day ever.) The activities I chose are below. None are original ideas, and most were found on TPT and teacher blogs. I will give credit where credit is due.
After scouring The Brown Bag Teacher and The First Grade Parade blogs, as well as TPT, I adapted several ideas to my own 100th Day centers and activities.
Arriving to School – When kids arrived, they had this waiting on their desks. I included a list of their 100th Day centers (idea taken from the aforementioned bloggers). This helped the kids pace through today’s centers. I also provided Smarties and a cute note that says Happy 100th Day of School Smarty. I can’t find where I got the original, but click HERE for lots of freebie options. The school provides a pencil and donut holes to write out “100”. It’s a fun way to welcome them to school.
Creative Drawing – In this center, kids used die cuts of “100” to create any picture they wanted. It was fun to see how creative they got with this.
If I Were 100 Writing Activity – Students wrote a paragraph about what life would be like if they were 100. This is an activity we do every year, but this year I used the template from The Lesson Plan Diva. One additional thing we do in our grade to spice up this activity is take the kids pictures and import them into an app to make them look old (I used Effectify this year, and have used Oldify in the past). We add the picture to their writing. Parents and kids love seeing these aged portraits.
Measuring and Hundreds Chart – Yvonne Dixon has a freebie that includes some great activities for the 100th Day. I used her hundreds chart and measuring activity from THIS packet. It ties in nicely with what we’ve been studying and it gets kids up and moving.
If I Had $100 Writing Activity – I used THIS packet again (from The Lesson Plan Diva) to get a writing template. Kids wrote about what they’d do with $100. Then we took pictures of them posing with large, fake money (that equals $100, of course). We pasted the picture in the center of the bill on the template.
Hershey’s Kisses Hundred Chart – Such a cute idea that The Brown Bag Teacher mentioned on her blog. This was a favorite today! You use garage sale stickers to number the bottom of each Hershey’s kiss (1-100). Then give partners partially-filled-out (or blank for a challenge) hundred charts. They take turns drawing kisses out of the bucket and trying to find where each goes on the hundred chart. At the end of the day we did a division lesson and split the 100 kisses equally between everyone to eat.
Hundredth Day Predictions – Very cute freebie that I got from The Brown Bag Teacher. We also used the activity cards in this pack as an early finisher activity today.
That’s it for this year! I’ve already got some changes in mind for next year … but I’ll take a rest from 100th Day stuff for now. 🙂
