Counting the Days of School
Counting the days of school is all about counting the 100 days of school and celebrating the 100th day. These are very popular math activities in kindergarten and grade 1. This daily counting practice is such a fun way to teach and consolidate number concepts.
Your students will absolutely love this predictable routine. You will be surprised at how many early numeracy skills and concepts can be taught. There is nothing quite like real life math to help your children connect their math lessons to their everyday lives.
If you are not already counting the days, I encourage you to do it!!
What is 100 days of school about?
From the very first day of school, the school days are counted and recorded until you reach the 100th day. Weekends and holidays are not included. You only count actual school days.
On the 100th day, your class celebrates by having a 100 day party. This party is not like your average party though. All the party games and activities are designed to teach and reinforce number concepts to 100 – but for some reason, the children don’t see the educational value. All they hear is PARTY!!
The 100 days of school celebration is a very exciting time – not just because of the party. The 100th day is a time to reflect and celebrate your class learning journey. By the time you reach the 100th day, your children have achieved so much and your little class community is more like a family. You really should celebrate all those achievements and milestones together.
Why count 100 days of kindergarten?
Basic numeracy skills are at the core of the kindergarten and grade 1 curriculum. Counting the 100 days of school is a daily routine which will help you develop and strengthen those basic numeracy skills in a fun and purposeful way.
The daily tally routine of counting your school days can be the perfect time to practice counting, consolidate numbers to 10, teach place value and learn number facts.
Some of the basic numeracy skills you can incorporate include:
Connect and order number names
Subitise collections
Early number sense
Number identification
Numeral formation
Ordering numbers
Recording numbers
Using tens frames
Count collections
Counting forwards and backwards
Counting by ones, twos, fives and tens
Number patterns
Using tally marks
Grouping tens
Place value
Early addition
Rainbow facts
More and Less
Partitioning
Counting the 100 days of kindergarten or grade 1 will give you many daily opportunities to teach, practise and revise so many early numeracy skills. But the best reason to count 100 days is because it is just plain fun!!
How to track 100 days of school
There are many ways to record each day. Our school days are always full. There seems to be more and more to be added to the curriculum each year so you might not be too keen to add yet another thing to your already crammed day.
So choose a recording method which is quick and easy and one which suits your year level. Choosing a recording method which relates to your specific curriculum can help your children consolidate their math understandings.
If you use bundling sticks in your math lessons, use bundling sticks to track the 100 days. If your curriculum has an emphasis on ten frames (like mine does), use ten frames to track the days.
If classroom organization is as important to you as it is for me, your classroom will run on your daily routines and procedures. Make the recording of your 100 days part of your daily routine so that it doesn’t get forgotten.
We record each day during our morning session/meeting. I switch up the teaching focus each day too. One day we might discuss how many more we need to make the ten and on another day we might count in 5’s or talk about using a ten frame to subitise. Your mini-math lesson can be as short or as long as you like.
The beauty of counting the days of school lies in the chance to learn about place value and grouping in tens. Using bundling sticks, MAB blocks or ten frames are useful tools because your children will easily see the ten bundle. I always make a big deal of bundling up the ten or trading 10 single MAB units for one long ten block.
Some of our favourite ways to track the days at school include:
Bundling Sticks: We use pop sticks as our bundling sticks. Blu-tac each individual stick on the whiteboard at the front of your room. When you reach the 10th day, you can bundle the ten sticks together and secure them with rubber bands. These bundles of ten are light enough to be blu-tacked on the board too.
MAB blocks: We have a magnetic set which are perfect for the whiteboard, but you can use blu-tac just as successfully. Stick a single unit block up each day. When you reach the 10th day, you can discuss the rules of trading and place value as you trade the single units for a long ten block.
100 Board: Most classrooms have a 100 counting board. Depending on the type of 100 board you have, roll or turn over a new number each day. You can also mark off each day with a small sticky note. A 100 board is great for teaching about number patterns and looking for connections between the numbers.
HOT TIP: Keep another record of your number somewhere else because your children (if they are like mine) will probably play with the board and it will be so easy to lose track of your 100 days counting.
Tally Marks: This is a quick and easy method for tracking the 100 days of school. Just place a new tally mark up in the corner of your whiteboard for each new school day. Just like the 100 board, either keep another record of your days or display it out of reach so your little helpers can’t add additional tallies when you’re not looking.
Ten Frames: There is a big focus on ten frames in our ACARA math curriculum so I always use them to record our 100 days of school. I like to combine the ten frame with one of the other methods.
In kindergarten we usually use the bundling sticks AND the ten frames. In grade 1, we used MAB blocks AND the the ten frames. If you are interested in using ten frames, I have designed some printable sets you can use over and over each year.
100 days of school printables
If you are looking for some easy prep 100 days of school printables, you will love these. My 100 days printables come in a nature theme or a neutral theme.
These beautiful natural themes will compliment any classroom décor. Just print and display and you will be all prepared and ready to count and record the days of school.
You will be able to count the first 100 days of school and beyond with these 100 days of school printables. The recording frames go to 200 so you have the option to keep counting past 100 if you wish. Simply write a number or place a sticker in the square each day. Easy Peasy!!
As a bonus, I have included differentiated blackline masters for you to reproduce in case you would like your children to have their very own 100 days recording worksheet.
These sets contain posters, teaching ideas and blackline masters for you to easily track the days and teach number concepts as you go.
EACH SET CONTAINS:
A Count the Days title poster.
Printable Sheet with Teaching Ideas.
10 posters with ten frames labelled to 200.
5 blackline master recording sheets which may be reproduced for students to count and record the days.
3 styles of posters to record and display the running daily tally.
You will receive a Count The Days pdf file containing 20 sheets of beautiful resources so you can easily teach those essential numeracy skills as you count and record your days at school.
EASY PREP:
Print the pages.
If you would like to use these year after year, laminate whichever ten frame posters you would like to use for recording and displaying your days in school.
Display on a bulletin board or whiteboard.
Ideas for using your 100 days chart
The 100 days chart is a not just a useful resource for tracking the days of school. You will be surprised how often you will refer to the charts in your everyday math lessons too.
We record the day on our 100 chart every morning. When we do this, we also spend some time counting how many tens we have, how many ones we have, how many more ones we need before we can bundle again etc.
We often discuss what the number was yesterday and what it will be tomorrow. There are so many opportunities for number talks when you count the days of school.
Most days we count and recount the days we have already been at school but sometimes we count how many days we have left before we reach 100. You can count forwards and backwards and count in ones, twos, fives or tens. Counting practice is one of the best ways to use your 100 days chart.
Sometimes I will challenge the children to look at our calendar and see if they can work out what day it will be when we get to bundle again or what day will it be when we reach 40 for example. So much math talk can happen around this fun activity.
How to celebrate reaching 100 days
Pinterest is full of wonderful ideas for celebrating 100 days of school. Just remember your children have been counting and anticipating this special day all year, so try to make it big and memorable.
I often have the room decorated with 100 balloons and the children are greeted with a 100 days door banner on their arrival. We have a 100 days cake, watch video clips about 100 and read books about the 100 days of school.
Here are some of our favourite 100 days video clips on You Tube:
We also talk about all the learning we have done together this year. We make learning plans and set goals for the rest of the school year too. We discuss our favourite memories of school so far and what we are looking forward to in the next 100 days. (BTW – we have never made it to 200. Our school year is usually around 190 days)
Here are some of our most favourite 100 Days of School celebration activities:
Draw 100 pictures. I cover a large table with paper and draw a 10x10 grid on it. The children collaboratively draw pictures in each of the grid squares.
We make 100 days hats. This is a cardboard strip which they glue 10 smaller paper strips to. Each of the smaller strips has 10 dot stamps on it. That makes 100 dot stamps!
We do 100 exercises by completing 10 lots of 10 different routines. 10 star jumps, touch our toes 10 times, hop 10 times etc
We estimate where 100 steps would take us, starting at the classroom door then we take 100 steps to see if we were correct.
We collaboratively read 100 books. We do this at Read to Self time. If you have a class of 25 children, they will need to read 4 books each. Just working out how many books each we need to read is a fantastic math activity in itself.
We each write 100 words. It’s fun to set a timer on the large screen panel. We usually set it for 10 minutes. The children are allowed to copy words from around the room. They love this one!!
During investigations there are opportunities for building with 100 lego, 100 plastic cups or 100 wooden blocks
If you are interested in discovering more ideas, you might like to check out my pinterest board HERE.
What to do when 100 days of school are over
Every year I am surprised at how disappointed the children are when we have reached and celebrated our 100 day target. They always ask, “what we are going to do now that the 100 days of school has been reached?” I think they enjoy the predictable routine so much; they don’t want it to end.
Your counting and math talks don’t need to end. You can continue counting and try to make it to 200 or you can count backwards and instead of adding a unit each day, you can take one away.
Or you can just finish and not continue with any more day tracking. I have never had a class that chooses this option though.
Counting the days of school and celebrating the 100th day are such great activities. If you take on this fun tradition, your children will absolutely love the routine of counting the days of school and you will love all the math you can teach.
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