ARCHBOLD - With paper clips, cotton swabs, pennies, puzzle pieces, baseball cards, balloons, buttons, and other count 'em items, first-grade students celebrated a much-awaited milestone - Hundredth's Day.
"I couldn't sleep last night. I was so excited about this," said A.J. Short as he finished his jewelry project - a sort of Breakfast at Tiffany's necklace featuring 50 Froot Loops and 50 Cheerios on a strand of yarn. "This is a good day. You get to do fun stuff. You learn things you don't know already."
Nearby, children hungrily eyed a table filled with 100 pieces of cheese, 100 pretzels, 100 pineapple pieces, and 100 paper plates.
Teachers, including Jessica Badenhop who sported 100 safety pins on her orange sweatshirt and Lou Ann Kleck who dotted her black shirt with 100 wiggly eyes, directed the daylong event last week. Held annually since 1993, it marks the first 100 days of school.
Because of snow days, Hundredth's Day was observed a few days early, but with a hall rental involved, it would have been difficult to switch dates, explained teacher Cindy Heckel.
A couple hundred inches away, Tahlor Clark, 6, exclaimed "Yes!" as she placed the special be-ribboned 100 box at the end of 99 numbered boxes that snaked across the floor at the Knights of Columbus hall. "I like 100 Day," she said. "because we've been doing a lot of 100 stuff to get ready."
Students in Miss Heckel's class, for instance, spend "morning math board" time where they practice skills with the calendar and clock. Here, students concentrated on 100 seconds of exercise; a story about 100 pancakes; 100-piece puzzles; cupcakes decorated with 100; a song about 100 days of school, and Hundredth Day T-shirts.
As first-grade student Shelby Cline lined up paper clips along a 100-inch long rope, she excitedly announced her progress. "We're almost there!" Finished, she scooted her finger across the wooden floor, counting and double checking her work.
"Everything is hands-on," said Mrs. Kleck, noting that the activities relate to the Archbold Area Schools' curriculum as well as to various state-mandated tests. Not only were the activities hands-on, but multi-sensory, too, she said. "They see it, hear it, touch it, talk about it."
Wearing a colorful handmade necklace with 100 beads, Colleen Kelly, who taught for 35 years before retiring, volunteered to help. "They are doing math all day long, and they are having so much fun doing it."
Throughout the day students counted down the minutes until they could enter the Collections Room where, behind closed doors, they revealed their secret stash of 100 items. During one session, students predicted who had the longest and shortest collections. Then they scooched across the floor, methodically putting marshmallows, pop can tabs, candy hearts, Tootsie rolls, paper letters, pennies, and balloons end to end.
The longest collection? Elijah Robison's drinking straws. The shortest? Teensy macaroni shells brought in by Viviana Garcia.
First Published February 2, 2005, 5:34 p.m.
