100th day of school

Today is the twins' 100th day of pre-school. So, their homework assignment was to bring in 100 of something to school. (Today is not Gretchen's scheduled day... we will add 1 more item to her 100 things for her to bring in on Friday, the 101st day of school.)

Someone suggested I send in 100 pictures of Carl. "You know you have them" - D.A. (fellow twin mom, fellow knitter, law professor... hmmm - can't say we have that in common. She carried her twins to 41.5 weeks!!! I didn't do that either.) But, that got me thinking... I usually bring my camera to school events. So, I put together a collage of 100 pictures of the pre-school class this year (so far).

I printed it as a 20x30 poster this afternoon. It came out great!!! It's too small to see, but it has shots from orientation, 1st day of school, the bus ride field trip, the pumpkin patch field trip, the Fall Festival, the county fair field trip, the Thanksgiving Feast show, the Christmas Nativity pageant, Carl & Gretchen's party and a few shots from the latest birthday party (the bowling one). Both teachers and directors are on there as well. I spelled 'pageant' wrong. Bummer. Oh well. PhotoShop ought to offer a spell check!

Now, I realize that making a collage of 100 photos and having it printed was me doing their homework... so let's just say that was my homework. I then had each child make their own project. I suggested Gretchen draw 100 hearts on a big piece of paper. No way! She was not hearing anything about that. Way too hard. So, I told her we could count by 10s (which both kids can do easily) and I would draw boxes on paper for her to draw groups of 10. "What if you can't see in side the boxes?" Try explaining 'boxes' to a literal 5 year old. "Let me show you what I mean...." I drew the lines and she figured it out right away. In case you are not able to decode the pictures, I'll translate:

hearts
polka dots
lines
flowers
suns
stripes
pumpkins
Gs
cats (5 Mollys and 5 Angus-es)
faces

Carl and art projects are always more of a challenge but, I know he loves glue... and dinosaurs... and yellow. So, I punched out 55 yellow dinosaurs and showed him the pile. then, I got his input for the next color and for the background color. After I punched the 100 dinos, we counted them. Although he only counted to 20 for his teacher, he can go to 100 easily for me. Oh well... guess he'll rock the end-of-year report card. Then, I let him squeeze mounds of glue onto his paper and gave him a paint brush to spread it around. Then, he dropped 100 dinosaurs on the paper, pausing occasionally to add more glue and spread it with the paint brush. Then ensured that all 100 dinos were planning to stay put! He had fun - and now has his own 100 item homework done.

And all 3 of us finished our homework on the 99th day of school..... aka... on time!!!!