Here's an interesting way to incorporate real math into your daily morning activities. Begin with the first day of school and end with the 100th day of the school year which normally falls about mid-February.

The teaching opportunities prior to the actual day are enormous. As the 100th day grows closer the excitement grows, too, until the culmination - the Hundred Day Celebration.

Feel free to adapt any of these suggestions in YOUR class situation:

1. Each morning, as part of our opening exercises, we count the days that we are together (that is, not professional development days or weekends and holidays).
   
   
2. Each day is noted: "It is Day 14" (at first this is a little confusing, especially if you are on a 5 or 6 day schedule in your school - but, soon everyone understands what is happening).
   
   
3. Day 3, Day 4, Day 5 is written on a popsicle stick each day. Once 10 days have passed, the sticks are bundled together. Each day the sticks are counted (e.g. "10, 11, 12, 13, ...").
   
   
4. Days are also counted off on a number line with a clothespin marker or each new number can be written onto adding machine tape that goes all around the classroom. (Change marker colour for each decade.)
   
   
5. Periodically count backwards from 100, or forward to 100 to estimate when we will reach the hundredth day.
   
   

1. Use Luke 15:1-7 (Parable of the Lost Sheep) to start the day.
   
   
2. Measure off a 100 cm piece of string. String 100 Fruit Loops or Cheerios onto the string to make a necklace (to nibble on all day!).
   
   
3. Make a Hundred Day crown by glueing 100 items onto the cardboard shape (use macaroni, stars, stickers, rice, etc.).
   
   
4. Invite a centenarian from a local seniors' residence to meet with the children.
   
   
5. Sing "100 bottles of milk on the wall", one decade at a time, periodically throughout the day.
   
   
6. Have "100 minutes of fun" by starting lunch hour 20 minutes early and ending it later. Part of that 100 minutes could be viewing the movie "101 Dalmations".
   
   
7. Choose from a number of related books - Caps for Sale, Millions of Cats, 500 Hats of Bartholemew Cubbin, etc. for story time.

8. Show related non-related titles - 100 School Jokes, 100 Easy Magic Tricks, etc.
   
   
9. Numerous related poems can be found in various anthologies.
   
   
10. Create a big book together using 10, 20, 30, etc. items per page.
    
    
11. Discuss life in our province a hundred years ago, or predict life in our province a hundred years from now!
    
    
12. Graph a hundred items - favourite colours, cookies, pets, etc., after interviewing 100 people in your school.
    
    
13. Keep a 100-day diary of school events, weather, etc. Bind it together to make a 100 day journal on the actual day.
    
    
14. Play BINGO using a 100 chart.
    
    
15. Groups of children can be challenged to create 3 dimensional objects using 100 items - e.g. toilet paper rolls, stacking blocks, styrofoam cups, marshmallows and toothpicks.
    
    
16. Use a trundle wheel to count off 100 metres down the hall.
    
    
17. Use 100 paper clips, toothpicks, stickers, stamps, to create a picture.
    
    
18. Use 100 heart-shapes to create a book worm shape (Hundred Day often falls very near Valentine's Day).
    
    
19. Share a cake with 100 candles served with 100 mL of juice each!