100th Day of School!

I'm sharing this post about the 100th day of school on the...108th day of school? I'm not even sure anymore. After 100 days of being a first-year teacher, I still haven't figured out how to make time for blogging. I'd like to document this year so that I can always remember this special year. And the 100th day of school was a very special day for me! Every morning we put a sticker on our hundred chart to show how many days left until this celebration. It always cracked me up when the kids asked what would happen after the 100th day. Some thought it was the end of the year!

Anyways, it was a pretty eventful day. I was inspired by Cara Carroll on her 100th day of school blog post on doing 100th day stations. She is right that there are so many ideas for the day, it's hard to just pick a few! While I didn't make my celebration as elaborate as Cara's, I DID do stations and the kiddos loved it!!! They were so engaged the whole day.

I learned a lot about my students from watching them interact in the stations. My kids that are usually the most wiggly and distractable really enjoyed stacking with 100 cups. This was my favorite station because it got them moving, experimenting, and working together! I didn't give many instructions on what to do with the cups. I just put them out and let them explore. Some students had to use some problem solving strategies when the others in the group would try and "hoard" all of the cups. I tried to intervene as little as possible and they did great!

The 100th day hats were a hit! Next year, I'd really like to do the cute ones that have all of the stickers on them to represent 100.  

One of the littles gave me this note this morning. Love it!!! As if I would forget the 100th day of school. ;)

 "The 100 day of school is today. I can not believe it. We are going to dance and celebrate. So do not forget today is the 100 day of school."

What shocked me the most was that the class was so enthusiastic about filling in a hundreds chart with missing numbers. I thought this was one of the less exciting stations, but they were really into it. My struggling students used my hundreds pocket chart as a reference and it was really exciting to hear, "I see a pattern!"

We did a little fingerpainting to show 100 gumballs.

 Throughout the month of February we worked on creating this "100 reasons why we love first grade" bulletin. This was my favorite to create and I loved walking past it everyday. Their responses were darling! I took a photo of my favorites. Obviously, I love the one that says, "I love mi tchr because byotfol (beautiful) evre day." Apparently a messy bun and the same pants all of the time is beautiful! :) Gotta love them!!!

That's the day in a nutshell. I spent a lot of this day reflecting and carefully looking around at all that I have created, done, and worked on. It has been very hard for me not to be overly critical of myself as a teacher. I'm new, and constantly comparing myself to other teachers. It's very easy to convince yourself that you're not doing enough, to worry about if your kids are learning, and to focus on everything that is going wrong. Now that I'm over 100 days in, I now remind myself that I am not perfect. My kids ARE learning and there is proof everyday. My mantra that I tell myself is: I'm a good teacher now and I will be an event better one tomorrow.