Thanks all! Yes, it is very tranquil and serene, I love my Hosta Walk! And it can only get better as these babies mature. Don B - that's an Abiqua Drinking Gourd planted summer of 2012. Here's another shot of a different angle in the Hosta Walk.

My CM consultant is having a crop from 9-3 with raffles and stuff but my neice (who also happens to be my godchild) is making her First Communion so I have to go to that instead. SEcretly, I'm bummed. But I guess I can't complain since it's a pretty big day for a little girl and she only does it once. I want all the details of what everyone did when I get back! :) Oh, by the way Pam, it's May 6th and a lot of scrapbooking stores are having big sales and stuff. Worth looking into!

Oh let me think.....It is the same time as the Kentucky Derby. I usually don't go because my dh is at the Derby. I'm thinking it is in May. Our scrapbooking store has good specials and such. CM have all day crops with lots of prizes and fun. I ended up going this year and paying a sitter. My CM rep also does a fall all day crop..really fun and you get lots done. Jewels

We always celebrated the 100th day of school with a full day of activities, some years it was a school wide celebration. The idea came about when it was decided that children lacked the understanding of place value. One thing we did in kindergarten was to count the number of days in school. We had a pocket chart with three sections, hundreds, tens, and ones. Each day of school we would place a straw in the ones pocket. When we got to 10 in the pocket, then we would bundle those with a rubber band and move the "group of ten" over to the tens pocket. Above each pocket was the number of "tens" and "ones" we had. So on the 39th day, we had 3 tens and 9 ones, etc. Of course, when we got to the 99th day, we had 9 tens and 9 ones. The next day, they got to add one more to the ones, making it a group of ten, but the 10 groups of ten got to be moved over to the "hundreds" pocket for the first time. They got the concept of there being 10 10's in 100 and since the other two pockets had 0 straws in them, they saw the number 100 above the pocket. One year, a very bright child in my class raised his hand and said, "If there are 10 10's in 100, then there must be 100 10's in 1000! I just about fell over. He had a real sense of number awareness! BTW, he plays minor league pro baseball now! I have been retired for over 10 years now and we did the 100th day celebration for at least the last 10 years I taught. Older grades would estimate the distance of 100 steps, one year a teacher had a large jar full of pennies that the second and third graders had to put in groups of ten, then in 100's etc to find out how many pennies there were, etc. lots of fun, creative ideas were thought of and shared with others. I think there were even children's books written for the 100th day of school. I guess my point is that even though they had fun on the 100th day, there probably has been an ongoing development of the concept of place value being taught. Having a special day to celebrate makes the learning more fun and the kids will learn from it. Tomorrow they get to see what 101 means!