1oo's Day

At kindergarten we would add a number to the number line every day. We would count to that number on a bead rack. (Kind of a very large abacus) If our kindergarten students couldn't count, it wasn't for lack of practice. When we reached 100, I carefully shut the classroom door and they could yell the number as loud as they wanted. The next day we had a 100's Day Celebration.
Students were to bring 100 things from home. We discussed how it needed to be something small like pieces of macaroni, dry beans or paper clips. We also discussed the problems we would have if anyone brought something big like 100 elephants. The idea was to get the students to understand the concept of 100 and have them practice counting.
The next day I had the room decorated like a party with crepe paper and balloons. They counted their 100 things from home, made a book with 100 pictures, (Rubber stamps, 10 to each of 10 pages.) and made a snack of 100 things to eat. (I will BLOG tomorrow with instructions.)
When I began teaching kindergarten I started a 100'z club for student's to be in. I had a mother of a "special needs" student say to me,"I wish you had an "Eight's Club". After practcing and practicing, this student made it to 10. I thought about this and changed it to a Counting Club. Each student received a paper ribbon for every 10 numbers they could count. Our goal was to count to 100 still but everyone was in the club. When students reached 100 I held their arms up like a champion and everyone in the class clapped for them. We put everything in groups of ten because counting to 10 was a reachable goal and it is good practice for our American base 10 system.