Hundredth Day in the English Classes

Yes, today we reached the hundredth day of the school year. At assembly this morning Ms. Sylvia explained to the pupils in the English Classes that this tradition of celebrating the 100th day of school is a little more than forty years old. The tradition began as a way of making the concept of 100 more concrete to entry level pupils. It has developed into a tradition that has gradually crept up through primary school grade levels. From kindergarten pupils to sixth graders, the English Classes at Cygnaeus School celebrated in a myriad of ways. After their Finnish lesson this morning, our first graders quickly made the dazzling 100-eyeglasses shown in the photo collage above.

Together with their fifth grade peer pals, the first graders created a list of one hundred adjectives. With their peer pals, the first graders searched their classroom to find 100 numbered stars that had been hidden. Once no more stars could be found, each first grader arranged the stars that s/he had found in ascending numerical order. The fifth graders checked their work. Then the first grade pupils sorted their numbered stars into even and odd numbered stars. The next challenge was to create a long line of all 100 stars in numerical order.  That was when we discovered that there are still three stars that have not been found!

The last challenge using the numbered stars was to lay them out on a table in rows of tens.  With a little trial and error, this task was mastered, too. The session with the fifth grade peer pals concluded with 100 seconds of silence. During the last lesson of the day Ms. Sylvia read the book, Fluffy’s 100th Day of School by Kate McMullen to the first grade class.

The fourth graders, together with the English Class kindergarten, started their Hundredth Day workshop with a rousing workout to Jack Hartmann’s Let’s Get Fit: Count to 100 Song. Then the pupils practiced estimating numbers of unifix cubes up to one hundred and then actually counting them.

Other activities included filling in the missing numbers on a hundred chart and drawing pictures of how they imagine they will look one hundred years into the future.

The second and third grade classes, along with some sixth graders, had 100th day booklets that offered lots of fun activities. These included estimating how many dice rolls it would take to reach a total of 100, estimating how many times someone’s name could be written in 100 seconds, doing fitness activities for 100 seconds and lots, lots more.

Finally some sixth graders were challenged with the task of writing poems celebrating the 100th day of school by using exactly 100 words under the guidance of Ms. Sandra. Incidentally, while thinking about what to write, a realization was made that our sixth graders have passed their 1000th day of school. The Finnish school system has 190 school days in a year. That means that the thousandth day in total for sixth graders occurred just before the autumn break. The Hundredth Day poems will appear in this blog within the next couple of days.

 

100th Day of School on Thursday!

All of Cygnaeus School’s English Classes celebrated our 100th day of school on Thursday of this week. The 100th Day activities kicked off with a short assembly where the English Class teachers lead us all in 100 actions to celebrate our 100 days of learning.

The fourth graders (and their teacher, Ms. Leena who is pictured in the photo collage above on the top right) created morphed photos of themselves showing how they will look when they are 100 years old!

This was all done in the name of fantasy and fun.

The second graders completed a 100th Day challenge that had some second graders huffing and puffing as they climbed 100 steps, jumped up and down 100 times, touched their toes and did jumping jacks along with measuring, sight reading and counting! It was all in good fun.

Some English Classes did more 100th Day activities, some did less because of subjects and projects already under way. No class did more than the first graders because this was their very first 100 days of learning.

Ms. Kati, the first grade teacher, gave first grade partners jars or boxes containing small objects. Each pair had to count out one hundred objects onto a tray. At first their were piles of this and that, but the pupils kept losing track of the count. They also observed that it was time-consuming for Ms. Kati to check the piles. Together they thought about the best possible way to lay out the objects so they could be counted easily.

Ms. Kati was tickled pink (delighted) when the children thought to put the objects in groups of ten. Then someone observed that this is like putting the objects in ten frames! Soon everyone wanted to sort their objects into groups of ten. When they were all done, the pupils toured the classroom looking at the tray displays of one hundred. As they moved around they counted by tens over and over again to the number 100.

Our hundredth school day also marked a special occasion in the first graders’ fish bowl. Since the very first day of school first and second graders have added a fish to the fish bowl in their respective classrooms. This is part of their morning circle time and has been written about in earlier posts. As the fish bowl got crowded, a ten fish replaced the ten unit fish. Even then the fish bowl got too small and it had to be replaced with a larger one. In the picture above, taken in December, there are 8 ten fish and 3 unit fish which denote that the first graders had attended school for 83 school days. On the 100th Day of school a sparkly, colourfully scaled fish replaced ten of the ten fish in the fish bowl. This was a momentous occasion for the first graders -and well it should be! The 100 fish had arrived!

On Friday Ms: Kati continued the 100th Days of School theme by reading the book, 100th Day Worries, by Margery Cuyler. The book tells about a little girl named Jessica who is worried about bringing 100 small objects to school for their school collection. She does not want to do what other classmates are doing.  It was a story that all of the children could relate to and was enjoyed by all.