By GERRI MCDONALD
Special to Atmore News
Perdido Elementary students in Mrs. Kambi Gohagin’s, Mrs. Anna Grant’s and Mrs. Brooke Drinkard’s kindergarten classes celebrated the first “100 Days of School,” on February 6. Preparation for the special day began over a week ago, as students created their individual “100” project at home. Everything from Cheerios and sequins, to stickers, seeds, Legos and paperclips, were used to create their unique set of 100 objects. They also did a writing activity to the prompt, “I Wish I Had” – everything from snakes and cupcakes to mermaids and dinosaurs. A group effort was required to create the “100 Silly Faces of Kindergarten,” in which children demonstrated their silliest faces. Each child also made a giant cupcake with 100 sprinkles!
First-graders also celebrated the day, transforming the numerals for 100 into many varied and unusual items. In addition, they did a writing activity where they shared what they would be doing when they turned 100 years old.
When the 100th day arrived, many of the students came dressed as they felt they would look if they actually were 100 years old! Several students were even using walking canes, wearing glasses and pretending to be hard of hearing.
Once in their classrooms, students were actively engaged in a wide variety of hands-on activities, all related to math and writing skills they have been taught. They created everything from a giant cupcake (paper, of course) with 100 sprinkles, 100 block creation, roll and race to 100, 100 snap cubes creation, stamping 10 sets of 10 different colors for their gumball machines, counting 10 multiples of 10 objects and placing them into their 100 Goodie Bag. Of course, the goodie bags contained edible snacks, so this was one of the student’s favorite activities.
Kindergarten students listened to the story Miss Bindergarten Celebrates the 100th Day, before enjoying the culminating activity of the day, which involved 100 blown up balloons and a lot of stomping, sitting, squeezing and pinching to pop all 100.
Each of the activities reinforced the point that hands-on activities not only actively engage children in the learning process, but also prove that learning can be fun!