100 Days of School Celebration

17 Kindergarten children are counting by 1’s, 2’s and 10’s to get to one hundred. The dialogue in the room goes something like this.

“I know I have 20 M & M’s in my bag because I got the M & M bowl twice and each time I added 10.”

“I can count up to 10 by ones, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.”

“I can also count by 2’s because it’s easy to grab two at a time and that would be a quicker way to get to 10.”

“I have 40 items in my bag and I know I need 60 more to get to 100 because I counted by 10’s from 40 and 10 plus 10 plus 10 plus 10 plus 10 plus 10 equals 100.”

If you peeked into the Kindergarten room last Friday, you would have seen a room of 17 five year olds, seated at a long table covered in candy, delighted by the math that they are doing. Today marks the 100^th day of school. This is a day celebrated in many Kindergarten classes around the country that usually results in little more than seeing the amount of 100 items, counting by ones to 100 and consuming a lot of candy. This class painted a very different picture. Children were problem solving and sharing all the strategies they had learned to understand the concept of 10 and then extending their knowledge to add those 10’s to build to 100. Some children were grappling and being supported to move from counting by ones to two’s to 10’s and others were being challenged with 5 items occasionally thrown in and large subtraction problems like how many more from 70 to make 100.

Every time another 10 items is collected the children individually place their hands in their lap with a grin on their face, eager to share their math strategy and highly anticipating what the next bowl will bring.

Early on Miss Soodek says, “What virtue did we study as a school this year that will be really important since we need to do our whole math class with this candy before we get to eat some?"

One boy raises his hand, “Control of the senses.” Smiles spread across the children’s faces.

They get it, they really get it!