Survivor--100 Days of School

Happy, happy one hundredth day of school!  We made it! May I not see ten groups of ten Cocoa Puffs for another year.  I am so very counted out. When I ground the coffee beans this morning I forgot to stop at my usual 28, and was still grinding at sixty!  Oops.

This week the students brought in "collections" of one hundred items to practice counting and grouping.

Packing peanuts wiggle when lined up.

We have counted:

• Legos
• Hot Wheels
• Pennies
• Popcorn kernels
• Beads
• Jigsaw puzzle pieces
• Drinking straws
• Crayons
• Jelly beans
• Popcorn
• Angry Bird cookies
• Animal crackers
• Cocoa Puffs
• Cheetos, for crying out loud
• Mixed crackers
• Feathers
• Pompoms

Marthe Jocelyn's book, Hannah's Collections, helps kids consider the idea of saving items. Other books focus on the counting and the excitement of bringing a group of objects to preschool. Hannah in the book is not a hoarder, although I question the accumulation of sticky popsicle sticks. Wish I could remember what book featured a boy saving chicken drumsticks in his sock drawer!

I'm not a hoarder, I'm just disorganized and hesitant to throw things away! Maybe I've spent my whole life accumulating items to take to school on the hundredth day. My dad wasn't a large scale tv-worthy hoarder.  He was more of a mini fast food condiment collector. My frail 89-year-old neighbor isn't so much a hoarder as too unsteady to go to the dumpster and too proud to ask for help.

Parents don't seem to send their kids out in the yard or park to collect acorns, juniper berries, clover flowers, or maple seed helicopters. In my childhood I could have taken a hundred foil potpie pans to school.

The hundredth day of school for grown-ups:

Four rows of ten hangers plus six rows of ten pickles equal one hundred.

Four rows of ten red wiggler worms do not cooperate.






Ten rows of ten wine corks can't go to school!

© 2013 Nancy L. Ruder