As part of their math curriculum, Neko's class has been learning about numbers. Of course, they began at the beginning with the basic numbers, and then progressed to counting by fives and tens and starting basic math. (As I mentioned before, Zero the Hero has been big conversation around here.)
A week from Thursday will be their 100th day of school. In celebration, they be having a big 100 party. They are each being asked to bring in 100 of something. Inspecting the different examples of 100 will give them a sense of what 100 "looks" like.
I started to think about what we had 100 of. 100 pieces of macaroni. 100 coffee beans. Neko tried to find 100 little plastic animals. Even though it feels like we have 100 of those, we actually only have a little over 40.
But Playmobil people? We have 100 of those. While she was at school I lined them up, 10 rows of 10 people. Adults and kids, royalty and fire fighters.
It was pretty impressive to see. 100 feels like such a huge number, but when you lay it out visually, it feels remarkably tangible.
When she got home, Neko admired my work. Then she started taking away people and asked me what 9 times 9 is, and when it took me a few moments to answer, I realized that I'd be perfectly happy if we did kindergarten math until graduation day.
Comments
3 responses to “How many is 100?”
Love this! Irene is doing the exact same thing this week with the big 100 celebration. Not sure if we have that many Playmobil dudes, but this gives me great inspiration to do something more fun and tangible than what I would normally think of. Thanks!
My nephew likes to ask me math questions. I tell him that one of the best parts of being an adult is knowing that no one can force you to do math.
Just saw this today! FUNNY!!! When Ali did it 17 years ago, she was sure she had 100 My Little Ponies. I was going to shoot myself if her collection truly added to up 100. (What in the world??) Turns out she had somewhere in the neighborhood of 30. thankgod! 30 was bad enough. Nathan on the other hand thought we had 100 books….. turned out that we had more than that, but he decided he couldn’t take them in. thank you sweet friend for pulling those memories out of my heart, and back into my head, on this eve of my oldest 25th birthday. thankyou.