Counting 100 Days of School

By Amy

As I alluded in my last post, the kids and I are counting our school days. Savannah and I really enjoyed counting her 100 reading lessons, so I thought counting school days would be fun too. We're planning a "100 days of school party." (Thanks, Goodin -- I think I got that idea from you!)

We are counting days of school two ways: 1. We put a straw in a ziploc bag hanging from a bulletin board, and display the appropriate number (ie-if there are 6 straws in the bag, we make sure the number 6 is showing through the bag.) When we get 10 straws, we'll bundle them all together, and move them to the left one slot, display a 1 in that bag and a 0 in the bag to the right (1 next to 0- 10)....it's to teach place value. We'll see if it works!

2. We're also putting together a 300 piece jigsaw puzzle! Each day, each kid gets to find their puzzle piece with today's number on it and put it up on the board. The catch to that is that Brad and I spent several hours putting the puzzle together so I could number the pieces systematically. You read correctly...My wonderful husband sat at the kitchen table with me for over 2 hours working on this puzzle! What a man! (Puzzles are not his favorite thing!) It took quite a while, but the kids really seem to like it and are having fun trying to guess what they are seeing.

Here's a picture of our other bulletin board. It's over the school table in Savannah's room. The big, red rectangle is where the kids stick their puzzle pieces each day. They started in the top left hand corner and will work their way around clockwise.

FYI- I got most of the ideas from a website my friend Rachel told me about. If you're interested, here's the link: http://www.jmeacham.com/calendar/calendar.htm