100 Days of School!!

by Amy

The kids and I have been counting up to 100 days of school. We done several different things to keep track of the days, but our favorite has been putting together a puzzle one day at a time. Each day we had school, each kid put up one puzzle piece. (The pieces were ordered, numbered and color categorized to make it pretty easy.) And, on Wednesday, we put the last pieces up!! To celebrate, we had a 100th Day of School Party! It was super fun! The kids and I put quite a bit of time in preparing for the day....

The biggest thing we did was make a pinata. It was fun ... sorda. Well, it was fun to have a pinata, but making it was kind of a pain! And, it didn't exactly turn out the way I had pictured it, but the kids weren't disappointed, so I was thankful!

(Notice: we all have on monogrammed aprons/smocks - thanks, Sue!)

And, Peter and Savannah decided to take it upon themselves to color 100 day decorations, so our home was covered with new pictures all celebrating 100.

Then, Wednesday, finally came! We invited Clara, Chloe, Aunt Rachel and Aunt Becky to come and be apart of our celebration! That definitely made it more fun! We began our day, by having Savannah count to 100 by 2's, and Peter and Alex count to 100 by 10's. Next, Clara and the boys counted 10 rows of 10 paperclips. Then, we clipped them all together to see how long 100 paperclips really is! It's pretty long!

Then, after helping the kids have a visual concept of how many 100 actually is, I asked them some questions and recorded their answers on some paper hung on the wall.

First, each person said what they would like to have 100 of....

Adults answered too. These were some of my favorite answers. RC, can you guess who said what? marathons...pinatas...stickers...mango steens...bites of ice cream...kisses

Then, we each said what we would NOT like to have 100 of...

Some answers were: mosquito bites...lion in our house...hours of crying babies...shots...bags to carry. I'd agree with all those answers! Wouldn't you?!?

Next we read Ps100 and asked if we could 'enter His gates with thanksgiving' by coming up with 100 things to be thankful for! Aunt Becky manned the Thankfulness Chart, taking one kid at a time, while the others were at our school table. I had 3 bags of things. The kids had to look at each bag and guess which one had exactly 100 items. I had a bag of 60 peppermints, 120 pennies, and 100 beads. The size really seemed to trick them! Since 60 peppermints were the biggest, they must have the most... They were surprised when they counted and only found 60.

After making bracelets with the beads, the time came for putting the last puzzle pieces up! We went from:

to:

(Yes, we started school, on July 21, 2008, and it took us 227 days to do 100 days of school! That's what happens when you take a month off when Grandma comes to visit, a month off to go to Thailand, and other random days here and there.... That's the beauty of home schooling!)

After completing our puzzle, we looked at life 100 years ago. What kind of cars did they drive; who was president of the US; what type of clothes did they wear; and what did the trains look like 100 years ago? Thanks to google image searches, I could quickly find pics of all those things and more!

Finally, it was time for the pinata! My kids were so excited! Clara and Chloe had no idea what a pinata was, so their excitement levels were not so high... Chloe did take the first swing, but decided, she didn't need to do that again.... Leigh, my house helper, had never heard of a pinata either, so she came to watch the fun!

To be honest, I wasn't sure that thing was ever going to break.... Here's a tip, just in case you ever decided to make your own pinata (which, if you live in the US, I don't recommend doing): 4 layers of newspaper are too many! It took quite a while for my kids to finally bust it open.

Unfortunately, Brad had decided to hang the pinata from Savannah's overhead light. Somehow in all the swinging, one of her lights crashed and shattered on the ground below. Serious bummer. Thankfully, no one was hurt!

After cleaning up all the glass, it finally busted (thanks to Pedo's bat swinging strength!) So, the kids all had a great time picking up the candy.

We concluded the celebration with some yummy homemade chicken fingers, fruit salad, and mashed potatoes that Leigh prepared for us. Then, we topped that off with some 'special' cupcakes that the kids and I made. (Thanks to Papa for the special cupcake toppers!)

It was a really great day! I think we'll definitely look forward to doing this again next year!

** Most of the pics above are complements of Aunt Becky! Thanks!