How many ways can you celebrate 100? This is our 4th year celebrating the 100th day of the year. Every time we have our "party" I try to think up ways for the kids to learn while they think they are playing.
This year the kids are another year older and we were able to add a spanish twist and counted in spanish, since they can already count in english by 1's, 5's, 10's, etc. I used the foam letters (above) for a visual for Kay. She always does better if she has something to touch. I know part of that is her age, and part of it is just her :)
This year, I got started a little early with this book for Kay. I didn't know how hard it would be for her to work through 100 words. But it was a fun goal. The book was too long for her to read in one sitting, but we used it over a week for reading time and she got all 100 words!
Kay is a preschooler, but she likes to read. And the fun thing about this book is that the dog's words are red and the man's words are black (or maybe the other way around). So I read one color of word and she looked for "her words" in the other color. That helped keep her interest in it.
Jay is in kindergarten and LOVES math. He's been working through his times tables (which I have a bunch of projects to share about sometime...) and so we decided to see how close we could get to 100 with multiplying 4's, 7's, 8's, and 9's. The legos really helped keep his interest with {this little project}.
Kay and Jay each took a side of this lego plate and used the "4" lego bricks to see how many it took to made 100. The legos let you "touch" each number, which was good for Kay.
We used the "6" lego brick with the "1" for the 7's.
| One thing that Jay noticed from this activity was that it was hard to land right on 100. Not everything divides evenly. |
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Then I got out some of our dice to play some games with.
The Roll to 100 is an adding game.
Jay wrote down each roll and added it to the roll before. The goal was to land right on 100 and not go over. This is much easier said, than done!
He played it over and over, determined to get it. And he finally did!
I gave the dice to Kay too to play with. She's not into adding double digits yet, but she wrote down each roll and practiced her handwriting and knowing what each number was.
For the Roll to $1.00 Game, I got out our coin dice that I made (from a previous little math project). Again, Jay wrote down each roll and added it to the one before. The goal: try to get to $1.00 without going over.
Again, easier said than done! But we turned it into an adding and subtracting game after we changed the rules so that if you went over you could do one more roll and subtract it to see if you landed on 100 cents.
Jay really enjoyed both math dice games and played them again and again.
And you have to have some party food right?
Here is our centipede snack:
He doesn't quite have 100 legs, but... close enough.
We made him with a sliced banana, craisins for eyes, and halved cheerios for legs. I would have used pretzels for the legs but we ran out.
The kids dipped him in yogurt and thought it was a great snack (whew!)
Now we're looking forward to celebrating 100 next year!
If you have any fun ideas, please share!
And with all this 100 fun, be sure to enter the PrintRunner Giveaway for 100 free full-color postcards! Go here to enter!
