This year, our first graders celebrated our second annual 101st Day Dalmatian Celebration! For years, we celebrated the 100th day, but found that we were repeating many cute activities that our Kindergarten (and even PreK!) staff were using. By the time students got to us in first grade, the aging app, 100 day buffet, and other beyond cute activities had all lost their novelty. We needed something new, fun, and different!
After talking with a friend of mine at a neighboring district, I discovered Erica Bohrer's The 101st Day of School set. I highly recommend this product in conducting your own 101 Day Dalmatian Celebration. This 108 page set has all you need to get started! Here's how we used her set this past week.
Getting Ready
We first sent out a note to our parents, asking them to send in a white t-shirt for their child. Using black sharpies, each student created their own dalmatian shirt for our celebration! Be sure to put a piece of construction paper in between the front and back of the shirt so that the Sharpie ink doesn't bleed onto your table. We kept these shirts at school, and asked students to wear black or white bottoms on the 101st day of school. We, of course, made our own outfits, too!
We also made our sentence strip puppy ear headbands in advance. Erica provides the patterns. All you need to do is trace, cut, spot-ify, and staple! I had students make 50 spots on one ear and 51 spots on the other for some counting practice.
An adorable addition this year was the 101st Day of School Banner. This add on is free on Erica's TpT store! We used our banners to decorate the hallways.
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| Photo from Erica Bohrer |
With the addition of a little butcher paper dog house, I had this simple bulletin board up in no time!
The Day Before
Our amazing Kindergarten staff goes big for the 100th day of school, so of course we didn't want to disappoint our firsties with their 101st day! After the kiddos left on Thursday afternoon, my team and I set to work prepping the hallways for our big day. First, we made a simple butcher paper photo back drop using lettering from Erica's set.
We then made this enormous hallway walk through! Again, this was made out of butcher paper, with the words painted on. The kids loved it!
Our Celebration
We finally celebrated the 101st day of school on Friday. The kids were so excited, especially after walking through our huge dog house entrance to our hallway! As the kids filtered in, I had them change into their spotted shirts, put on their ears, and get started right away with the day's festivities.
Instead of our usual morning work, I set out legos, blocks, dominos, and other building materials, challenging the kiddos to work together to make "dog houses" built out of 101 objects. Of course, I had fun dog themed music, like "Who Let the Dogs Out" on in the background!
For easier management, I picked eight (there are many, many more) of my favorite activities from Erica's set to set up as mobile centers. We completed four in the morning and another four in the afternoon. I simply packed all materials needed for each activity into trays, set the timer for 15 minutes, and floated around to assist groups. Each time the timer went off, kids cleaned up the center, packed their take home page in their folders, and waited for me to rotate the centers. Since I have four tables of about five students each, this worked perfectly! Here are the activities we used:
Dalmatian Rhyme and Sort: Students sorted cards into "Rhyme" or "Does Not Rhyme" piles and recorded their answers.
Dalmatian Find and Color: Kids took turns drawing a card, reading the number and color out loud. They then found this number on the chart and colored it the designated color. At the end, they revealed a mystery picture!
Dalmatian "ee" and "ea" sort: This activity was especially timely since we just introduced "ee" and "ea" words. Students sort the cards and record their word lists.
Dalmatian Write the Room: I cut apart one of the word walls and hid the dog themed words around the room. Students found all twelve words and recorded them, then wrote sentences using the words. (Note: I created the work page for the activity.)
Dalmatian Build a Sentence: Our pups matched the cards by picture, then sorted the mixed up words to create a fun, themed sentence. I loved the writing paper with this one! It made them remember to write neatly and include punctuation.
Dalmatian Writing Center: Using two different handy word walls, kids wrote a narrative about the 101st day of school or a story about a dalmatian. (Note: I created the writing paper for this.)
Dalmatian Counting Mat: Another one of my favorite! I loaded unit cubes into different bags. Our dalmatians spilled the bags and used these cute counting mats to record the number of cubes in each bag. This was great for counting by tens and ones!
Of course, the day just wouldn't be complete without a fun puppy snack. I use this recipe to make puppy chow. I love it because it avoids peanut butter! Pressed for time? These Scooby-Doo graham cracker snacks are a hit, too!
Excited to try out your own 101st Day Dalmatian Celebration? Be sure to check out Erica's complete product here! For more great tips and products, you can also follow her on Blogspot at Erica's Ed-Ventures or on Instagram.
Thanks for reading along, and be sure to come back tomorrow, Monday, February 6 for an exciting announcement!
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