Last Friday, Brickey-McCloud celebrated the 100th day of school when they finally got back to a full day. Now it wasn’t probably the “real” 100th day of school since a Google search gave me multiple potential days, and yes I know I could have counted them myself but I didn’t. Regardless, it was always a great way to pull all the students, teachers and parents together in activities around that real or created 100th day!
How did the first 100th day celebration become a thing? Why not celebrate the 90th day since that is truly halfway in the middle of the year since state law requires kids attend school for 180 days?
The 100th day of school celebration began in 1979 when teachers Lynn Taylor, David Cooper and Mary Hurdlow started the tradition in their classrooms. They got the idea from an activity called The Days of School Graph in their math curriculum. Two years later, Taylor published the idea in a national newsletter and the idea took off.
Some of her first activities were counting pennies to make a dollar and a 100th day snack, a recipe she called Hiyaku, named after the Japanese word for 100: 100 raisins, 100 peanuts, 100 cereal pieces, 100 chocolate chips and 100 sunflower seeds.
Since then, the activities have gone schoolwide and students and teachers go extreme, even costuming up as their version of a centenarian: a.k.a. Hattie Halter.
Educators and kids! They are a fun-loving group!
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