Groovy Educator

One of my all time favorite activities for the 100th day of school is the Hershey Kiss Hunt.  Basically I purchase a couple of backs of Hershey Kisses and some circle dot stickers.  I number the stickers one to one hundred and then stick them on the bottom of the Hershey Kisses.  While the children are at special area, I hide them around the room (like Easter Eggs for an Egg Hunt).  When the children return, I set out the hundred chart.  When each child finds a Hershey Kiss, he/she places it on the hundred chart until all the candies are found.  Once all the candies are located, we divide up the Kisses evenly. The kids LOVE this activity!

Calendar is a great time to review math skills.  This year I am using a write and wipe calendar instead of the pocket chart that I have used for years.  So far I like its flexibility... Instead of having the calendar filled out completely before the students arrived, I left it blank and we discussed how to put the numbers on the chart.  Today was August 22nd.  I pretended not to know where to put the twenty-two on the calendar.  Jokingly, I said why don't we put it here (pointing to the square where one should go.  This caught the students attention and they were very interested in this part of the lesson.  I liked making them think and then modeling the problem solving strategy of trial and error. After I told them that today was Wednesday, we determined that the twenty-two had to go in one of the squares in the column under Wednesday.  This helped orient the children to how the calendar is set up.  We decided together, while comparin...