100 Days of School

     This week I got to celebrate 100 days in school with the 12 coolest people I know! Y'all, we had such a fun day! We kicked it off by decorating these cool shades and crowns that our wonderful Head of School got for us. My kindergarteners were so excited by this that they made up a song and dance about ME! Here is how this conversation went:

Author: "Ms. Peden is the best teacher ever!"

Smiley Jack: "AND she is a pirate, that is really cool!" 

Daydreamer: "Hey, we should make a song and dance up about it!"  

Author (singing): "Ms. Peden is the best pirate teacher, Ms. Peden is the best pirate teacher that ever lived!..." 

  Here is what we did on the 100th day of kindergarten... 

We read 100 words! Our 100th word was LOVE because we LOVE school and our school family! 

We wrote about what we want 100 of / don't want 100 of... 

We wrote about something that we have learned... this comes from Deanna Jump's 100 Days product on TPT... 

"100 days ago I didn't know my friends, but now I do!" 

I LOVE EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS WRITING, including my exaggerated skin tone.

     We went on a hunt for 100 hershey kisses! 

This is an idea I got from my friend Greg Smedley-Warren. You can read all about it on his blog, here. I tweaked this activity and had my students write the number of each kiss that they found on a post it note. They had to read the number to me, put their kiss in our "Kiss Your Brain" jar, and place the sticky note where it belongs on our 100 chart. 

     We build 100 block structures with our new Keva Contraption!

I split my class into two groups. The groups had to work as a TEAM to build ONLY ONE structure / tower using ALL 100 Keva Planks. This turned out to be a challenge for my little ones because they  wanted to build different things and they had to work carefully not to knock over the blocks. GREAT team building exercise. 

        I was so proud to see these students discovering things for themselves. It may be simple, but they were learning. They realized what was wrong with their first ball run and corrected it all on their own! 

Here are some ideas from the K4 class: 

The K4 class reads one book every day. On the 100th day of school their teacher had a former K4 student, now a First Grader, read aloud Count Your Blessings to the class. 

They made a 100 treat snack and counted each item into cupcake wrappers. 

You may want to check out these products! I absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE KEVA PLANKS, and recommend them for ANY elementary classroom. They say 7 and up, but my kindergarteners are still learning lots from using them!