Should you be the mother whose child springs on you the new news that she has some sort of 100 Days of School Project due oh…13 hours from now, requiring 100 “creative” items counted and placed into a plastic bag, I am here to help. Well, after I determine how the heck I missed the notice home about the project in the first place.
First, heed the advice of Christina: Stay the hell away from Pinterest.
Next, try one of these:
1. 100 pennies
2. 100 words cut from a magazine
3. 100 Cheerios
4. 100 Cheerios passed off as HFCS-free organic oat-O cereal
5. 100 peanut butter chips passed off as HFCS-free organic…eh. Whatever. They’re peanut butter chips, deal with it Brooklyn.
6. 100 cat hairs collected from the couch
7. 100 “folded pieces of paper” (Sage’s idea)
8. 100 mismatched game pieces you’ve been meaning to get rid of anyway.
9. 100 Q-tips
10. 100 used Q-tips (should you be really bad about taking out the bathroom garbage.)
11. 100 overpriced items from the American Girl Doll catalog.
(Is it cheating just to drop the entire catalog in there whole?)
12. 100 drops of contraband child’s multi-symptom cold syrup, now 4 years expired but still potentially useful.
13. 100 crayon stubs
14. 100 pencil shavings
15. 100 squares of toilet paper; 50 if it’s 2-ply
16. 100 carefully cut, beautifully crafted paper snowflakes. (Ha! Just kidding.)
17. 100 mother’s tears.
Glad to be of assistance. Good luck out there.
I sent coffee beans…I think the teacher got the joke (she’s cool like that)
Genius! Where were you all when we were counting Q-Tips?
Raisins, coffee beans, mini marshmallows (though there is the risk that they don’t all get to school), paper clips, a hundred page book or pieces of uncooked elbow macaroni. I think we also have 100 unmatched socks and gloves just waiting to be reunited.
Ooh, mismatched socks…I could totally have done that. Good one.
I love Silas’ teacher. She let parents off the hook by having us send in supplies to make a pancake and sausage breakfast. The kids each got one link and two pancakes. They ate their 100 and that was that.
Fabulous!
Our first just started Kindergarten this year so this was new to us. He told his teacher he was bringing 100 books. She did not discourage this idea. I had to break it to him that was too much for him, his Dad and his brother to carry 3/4 mile to school. We went with the Cheerios necklace.
We had a friend who had headed off to the wild west and taken to mailing various oddities to our children. One package contained a year’s worth of his beer bottle caps — many different varieties and a raccoon skull, among other marvels.
You see where this is going, don’t you? I believe that we let the oldest (in kindergarten and I knew the teacher because I’d gone in to help once or twice a week) take in 100 (washed in dish soap to lose the beery smell they still had) caps. We also made him take in a more traditional hundred of something more mundane like paper clips or pennies.
If only there had been 100 raccoon skulls in the box…
Jen, I love the beer bottle caps idea, mainly b/c my 12 yo has been collecting them from her dad since she was, maybe, 2 years old. She has a HUGE box of them in her bedroom and it used to be funny when she’d see a cap on the ground, pick it up, and say, “ooooo, I don’t have this one!” One day, I found a new bottle cap and went upstairs to add it to her collection. I opened the box and was hit with a HUGE whiff of BEER. It hadn’t dawned on me that, dur, the caps would smell.
Wow am I glad our school doesn’t do that project–they celebrate 100 Days in KG and 1st grade, but no projects! Whew! 🙂 (This year my 3rd grader was all sad they didn’t get to celebrate it. 3rd grade is hard, a big transition to more work, less play.)
When you’re child is a hoarder like mine, the possibilities are endless… 100 marbles from his marble collection, 100 shells from his shell collection, 100 5¢ party favors from his… yeah, it’s a little crazy in his room.
Ugh. I am so over this project. I kinda got it in kindergarten…learning to count to 100, etc. But in 1st grade, there was no set-up, no context, no reason. Just a note with directions to use 100 items to “create a creation” AND write a story about it. AND spend your February break doing it. Parents were strongly encouraged to assist. AND we were not allowed to use food products.
FWIW, my son wrote 100 words that started with the letters of his name on Post-Its & stuck them to a poster.
Somebody, please tell me we won’t still be doing this in 5th grade!
My daughter cheated — she took 100 puzzle pieces from a 100 pieces puzzle set. That way she didn’t have to count the pieces . . . (sigh).
That is totally NOT cheating. That is showing advanced problem solving skills. I think your daughter will do well in life…
Agreed! That is genius.
My son is in kindergarten so I had no idea. I happily used it as a way to clean out my crap drawer. I was so bummed when all the crap was returned the next day.
Ha! Then I’m glad I didn’t go with the game pieces.
Anyone want 100 very gently handled but unused Q-Tips?
Luckily for my kindergartener the project was optional. She chose to draw 100 flowers on a piece of paper. Luckily she draws small so it easily fit on one page. Whew.
And upon re-reading my post, apparently I’m feeling lucky tonight.
For eldest, I got away with toothpicks (some crazy kitchen gift-gadget had them). But being obsessed with rocks, my eldest was angling for gravel at the side of the house… about 10 pounds?
I was “ready” for younger one, local dollar store works until 10 pm, so she got some random plastic beads on string. It was either that or 100 pine needles (we were low on q-tips, checked that).
This 100 day of school thing puzzles me. My oldest is a Kindergartner this year, and I was sort of afraid of the 100 day project. But all that she had to do was color in a paper with pictures of 100 little things inside a big “100” – and they did that at school. Having read the stories from others, I feel that perhaps I should send our teacher a thank you note for letting us off easy!
DO IT.
I’m tempted to say my kids’ school doesn’t do this, but now I’m scared to look in my six-year-old’s backpack.
If it comes up think I’d make him count out either 100 legos or 100 perler beads, depending on how big a ziploc baggie was.
My girl proposed to bring 100 buttons since my mom has a little artcraft/ sewing workshop. All I can say, is that grandmas are the best
100% perfect.
This one has snuck up and bit me on the, ahem, more times than I care to remember.
Only the older kids celebrate their last 100 days of school here. And this mostly by drinking and throwing flour over kids who go to another school.
Fun times…
Our school’s 100 day project is rather…involved. First “we” had to make a paper-bag vest following a template. Then the kids had to adorn the vest with 100 of something; and my ambitious 6-year old decided on 100 letters – traced on a stencil, cut out, and pasted into shapes (10 letters per shape). Thank God we have a nanny, becuase I hate to stifle ambition and creativity but that was WAY too much work for me. I’d have been OK with him just writing 100 letters all over the thing randomly.
At our school only Kindergarten does this. I hate it…and I’m so grateful that my youngest kid did it this year. The rules at our school say no food products. I think arts and crafts items are perfect for this…100 pom poms, googly eyes, sequins, beads…and so on. Cotton balls would be good too. On the letter that comes home, there’s a 1/2 in square, and your item has to fit. Makes it even harder…no qtips. Abigail did pom poms. Katherine took pennies.
Now I’m working on the class project for the spring carnival auction…child sized teepees. Yay me!
CJ embarked on an ambitious 100th Day project: folding 100 cootie catchers. She petered out around #53 or so, and ended up bringing in 100 pieces of string. I, of course, discovered this a week after the fact when I found the 50-something cootie catchers still in her backpack.
So, another lesson: Put the kibosh on your kids’ own ambitious ideas.
Amelia’s private K teacher gave a fun twist when it was our turn. She sent home an ultra big piece of construction paper and encouraged the kids to paste 100 of their favorite things. We cut out pictures from catalogs, we stuck stickers and found random things that she liked and glued those babies on. It didn’t take long at all. We had pictures of characters she liked, things in her favorite color, rhinestones and pom poms, a rock she found out on the playground and held on to. I actually kept it because it was a nice snapshot of the things that she was into that year. And we did it all in one night. The sad part was she came down with the strep that night and wasn’t able to be there on the actual day 🙁 Still, her picture was hung up on the wall in class for about 3 weeks.
Merrick hits kindergarten next year, so I know it’s going to rear it’s ugly head one more time!
I remembered the 100th day project about 10 minutes before we had to leave for school. Struck gold in my desk with a stack of sticky notes marked with exactly 100 sheets! No counting for me and my son had fun sticking them all over himself!
100 wine corks. Cuz mummy’s juice is a daily life sorta thing :p
I didn’t even know the “100 days of school” project was a thing until this year. We made a necklace with 100 beads because I wanted to keep the 100 things contained on a string. But I think there were like 103 beads because I’m a horrible mother or something.
#4! Stop stealing my ideas!
We went to visit family in Puerto Rico the week before so we got lucky: “100 things we found on the beach in puerto rico” – shells, sea glass, took pictures of a few things and Child drew a bunch of waves. Came out nice. But I think the child that turned in a piece of paper with 100 “L” s on it (letter of the week) was a little embarrassed in the midst of all the other creativity.
Probably the L kid will grow up to start the next microsoft.
We start school in the middle of August, so I could have really used this post about 3 weeks ago! I misunderstood the instructions and thought we only had one night to complete this, so we went with 100 stickers stuck on the piece of paper, since that is what I could find in the house. My son got lots of practice counting to 100 since he kept forgetting how many stickers he had stuck on his sheet!
My girl brought in 100 comic books, because we are all about the superheroes in my house. Plus, I’d missed the part about the display of said items. Oh well. Nobody else in kindergarten had that many comic books.
My kids did pennies and Cherrios. They wanted to use Gummy Bears but there’s no way 100 of those would have made it to class.
I literally had no idea that other schools did the 100 days project. Thought it was something unique to my kiddo’s school. Doh! Such good ideas, though! I can’t even tell you what I did.
My step daughter had this project last year she was however at her mom’s when this project came home…now my 2 daughters are in kinderkindergarten so project x 2….my 5 year old is disabled so we’re doing 100 hand prints different color paints, my 6 year old is so so so picky and crafty 100 hearts cut out of different fabrics aall placed in 1 giant heart SMH 3 years from now we will doing it again with my son lord help me now!!