100 Days Project - A reflection

Today was Holly's 100th day of school.  We have been spending the last two weeks working on her project.  

We decided to create a garden using 5 colored groups of 20 straws for the stems and 10 groups of ten colored tissue paper for the flower tops.  Each night we would commit to making a set of ten flowers and slowly over the last two weeks grew it too 100.

While the project I am assuming was meant to teach the kids about Math, groups, sets, counting, adding, ect it caused me to be rather reflective of time going by.

While today marks the 100th school day it has been 167 actual days since Holly started school - this seems like a life time ago - but - tomorrow Lyra will be 11 weeks old, that's 77 days since she was born and that seems like yesterday! Tonight she is 9lb 3oz almost double the weight she was when she came home - 5lbs 8oz yet she is only a pound heavier then when Holly was born...

Then there is Holly's growth, though she is probably only 3lbs heavier and maybe an inch taller she seems like a different child... In the last 100 days of school she has begun to read and write!

She completes a daily journal at school with actual sentences describing her weekend activities and pictures of parties and gardens and princesses.  She can write all her letters and even read simple books she has many many site words.  And as illustrated by the 100 day project she knows 50+50 is 100 or if we plan to complete 10 flowers a night and we have already done 7 we only need 3 more.

I reflect back further to last year at this time when we were touring kindergarten classes. I remember seeing the kids journals and artwork, hearing them count by 10's to 100 in circle time and thinking my kid will never be able to do this in just a year.

Fast forward to only 5 months ago when kindergarten was starting, my kid still couldn't begin to do any of those things, let alone sit in circle for more then 5 minutes or at the table for 10.  I was worried she might not make it through the first day of school.

Yet here we are 100 days in and I am amazed by all she has learned and all she can do and she is so independent and grown up too.  She learns about history, and landforms, plants and marine animals, she listens and answers questions, she reads and she writes and though on some nights these past two weeks it was a chore getting enough focus to get through ten whole flowers or figuring out number bonds and writing our weekly book reports she has come so far.  

I am amazed by all she has accomplished in Only 100 days of school.  And while she thinks it's a very big number and really can't discern it from a million in my almost 14,000 days of life I know it's such a drop in the bucket. So while it on one hand seems like a life time ago, when I look at the other hand it seems like just yesterday she was that 9lb baby only 77 days old... But no in just 1 month she will be my 6yr old and she will have over 2000 days under her belt.

100 straws

A description 

Ms. Kai's Daily message

Lionel's 100 candies

Holly looking around

100 googly eyes

100 Lego houses

100 cards

100 pieces of sea glass

100 popcorns - love the display

With over 100 kindergardeners

There were more then 100 displays to look at

100 things older the 100

By Boone 

This was great - 100 doggy treats

Oh and 100 pop cycle sticks

But each with the name of 1 kindergardener

100 bones

And 100 nails to make a giant fish

100 rocks

And 100 pine cones!

The projects were all so creative!

Here is Holly working on hers

While having a sleep over at Tanta Kat's!

I hope the next 100 days of school will be as great as the last!  Thank you Mslcolm X and especially Ms. Kai