The 100th day of school is highly anticipated by kindergarteners, first graders, even second graders everywhere! Since I teach at a small, private school, we celebrate as a cluster which means we celebrate with the first grade and second grade classes. (There’s only one class per grade.) We celebrate for half of our day with centers that go along with “100”. You’ll find many 100th day center ideas in this post.
Prep for the Day
Before the 100th day of school, there is much we need to prep. In order to prepare our 100th day centers, we get our parents involved. Parents are in charge of bringing a plain white t-shirt (that they don’t mind getting decorated on), volunteering to run a center and bringing in food donations for our trail mix center.
100th Day T-shirt
About a week before our 100th day, we send home our classes white t-shirts with a parent volunteer. This volunteer stencils “100” on each shirt. When finished, they return the white shirts. We then send the white shirts home with the student who brought it and they get to decorate it. They can decorate it however they want! We let students wear this shirt on the 100th day of school, which is a big deal for us because our students wear uniforms.
100th Day Center Ideas
This special day is celebrated through completing our 100th day centers. Since we celebrate as a cluster, we each have three centers in our rooms and students move throughout the centers and throughout the rooms from about the beginning of the day until lunch. We mix students so they can make friends in other grades. Here are a few 100th day center ideas you can use for your 100th day of school!
100 Fruit loops
For this center, students count out 100 fruit loops and string them to make a necklace.
Tip: count them out in groups of 10
Tip 2: Use 2 pipe cleaners to create the necklace (way easier to string!)
100 Art Project
Print the number “100” on a piece of paper for each student. Students cut out the 1 – 0 – 0 and create something out of the numbers. I like to put out markers and construction paper and glue so students can really get creative with it!
100 Stacking Cups
One of the easier centers – students create a structure by stacking 100 cups.
Tip: make it more interesting by creating a contest. Who can make the tallest structure? Who can design the strongest structure?
100 Legos
Another easy center – students count out and build with 100 legos.
100 Words We Know
Students at this center get a piece of paper and they write down as many words they know or until they get to 100 words.
Tip: put this center in front of your word wall to help students get started!
100 Pieces of Trail Mix
This center is always a top favorite! Students count out different items to make a trail mix of 100 pieces. You can use whatever you want to make the trail mix. We use things like goldfish, popcorn, pretzels, m&ms, chocolate chips, cheese-its etc.
100 Paint Dots
For this center, students get 10 colors and decorate a piece of paper with 10 dots in each color. We use Q-tips for them to create the dots.
100th Day Crowns
This center is one of my favorites because students get to wear their crowns home and they always look so happy and proud of all they’ve done on our 100th day. We have a crown template we use along with a sentence strip to create the crown. Once they color and decorate the crown however they want, we fit it to their heads and they get to wear it the rest of the day!
Color to 100
This is a math center where students color a 100s chart. They roll a dice, color in that number with one color. Then, they roll the dice again and continue to color the 100s chart but in a different color. They continue until they roll and color all the way to 100 or past 100.
I love celebrating these special milestones and holidays in the classroom. This day is so important to our kindergarten, first grade and second grade students as 100 days in school is a big accomplishment! What are your favorite 100th day center ideas you learned in this post? Do you do any of the same? Share how you celebrate in your classroom below!
