Hundredth Day of School Scavenger Hunt

The year is flying by and the Hundredth Day of school is almost here!  There are so many great ways to celebrate this milestone.  Get your students up and actively practicing number recognition (all the way to 100!) with a scavenger hunt.  To get ready, simply write the numbers from 1-100 on some color coding labels.  (You can use any other little stickers or even tape that you have around, but these stickers are super easy to remove and the colors add a nice twist.  If you write the numbers out on the stickers as they are on the paper, you will end up with an A B C D pattern for your students to discover when they’ve found them all).  If you use plain stickers/tape, write your numbers in different colors.  Otherwise, just use black.  Print out our hundreds grid, or use your own.

Hide your stickers around your room.  Be creative and remember – kindergarteners are short!  Don’t be afraid to bend down and find “hiding places” close to the ground.  Try on the trash can, or on the door handles, on the backs of chairs and on table legs.  Give each student the matching colored crayons and a clip board if you have them, and send them out to find the numbers.  Each time they find one, they color the square on their paper the corresponding color.  So, if they find 11 and it’s on a red sticker, they color the 11 square on their paper, red.  Make sure they understand that the stickers stay where they are, rather than being collected.  Their job is just to color their paper the matching color.
You may well be surprised at how long this keeps them busy.  Kids always seem to want to keep hunting WAY past when you would probably have expected this activity to end!  There’s something about finding hidden things that just seems to inspire them to keep on going!

Looking for a great book to kick off your Hundredth Day celebration? Miss Bindergarten Celebrates the 100th Day of Kindergarten (a sequel of the beloved Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready for Kindergarten) is the perfect story to get your kids ready to mark this milestone.  Miss Bindergarten is back and getting ready to celebrate with her rhyming animal students.  Ashley Wolff’s colorful  illustrations and Joseph Slate’s adorable text will help you mark the day with a smile.

Have a Hundredth Day celebration planned for your classroom?  Please share!  We’d love to know how you’ll be marking this milestone!