100 looks like...

We celebrated our 100th day in first grade last week! One of the things we did in anticipation was to fill a bag full of one hundred things. I love how creative everyone was. We had fun labelling and sharing our bags. There was Monopoly money, jewels, cereal, rainbow loom bands, pennies and even more. 

Then we looked closely and compared the bags. We noticed that 100 can look very different from one bag to the next. Miss Jennifer brought in 100 unpopped corn kernels and 100 popped popcorn! That's was very cool...same, same but different. 

We have been practicing estimating in math. Understanding that the size of an object effects the amount of space it can fill has helped us become more accurate estimators. One trick we've learned, when estimating how many objects are in the estimating jar, is to eyeball what ten would look like and figure out about how many groups of ten there might be. 

We've also been busy estimating in our counting books and then counting the objects. The quickest and most accurate way to count is by twos into groups of ten. Then we can quickly count the groups of tens and the ones left over. We're getting better and better! And if we lose track we don't have to start all over again. We're working smarter not harder!