For several years now, kindergarteners have been starting the school year with a challenge: counting the first 100 days of school! For kindergarteners, the number 100 represents immensity! So when the teacher suggests counting 100 days, they’re both impressed and impatient! This project, which lasts several months, helps develop a number of skills:
- Build the numerical sequence and learn to write large numbers,
- Learn the number rhyme,
- Frequenting the dozens
- Organizing your count
- Create collections of 10 objects
- Preparing an exhibition,
- Write an invitation.
Our rituals and numbers
A daily ritual is then put in place: each day, a child draws a dot on the class calendar to mark the passage of time, then adds a bead to a box. All the pearls are counted each day to find out how many school days we’ve spent together! On the tenth day, the 10 beads are exchanged for a bar of 10; this time, the 10 beads are “tied” together, representing a ten. The remaining beads are units. This game introduces children to the concepts of tens and units. Very quickly (often around day 30), they understand that it takes 10 tens (or 10 bars) to reach 100! At the end of the countdown, children exchange the 10 tens for a plate of 100 beads all strung together. They love to prepare displays for their parents and friends, and above all to celebrate. As always, their imagination is their only barrier… this time, they’ve built collections of 100 objects, or put together 100 words on a theme, or written the numbers up to 100… Usually, they also prepare the invitations for their parents, but this year, the party was reserved exclusively for them, and… they had the time of their lives! So 100 times 100 Thanks to the kindergarten teachers, Mesdames Laure Vergult, Sandrine Claude and Sophie Lanau, and of course to the children for their magnificent creations.
