If you have a kindergarten aged child like me, then you are probably aware of the impending holiday in classrooms around the country. Different schools will hit this landmark day at different times, all depending on when they first started the school year back in the late summer. Do you know what it is?
It’s the 100th day of school, of course! My daughter’s classroom has been keeping a chart marking each day of school, and we’re currently in the late 80s. They’re not only learning how to count to 100, but they’re also talking about the concept of grouping and counting by fives and tens. One hundred certainly feels like a gigantic number to a child who’s only been alive for five years or so. To see 100 of anything can be pretty exciting.
Masayuki Sebe’s Let’s Count to 100!, released last August, is a wonderful accompaniment to this type of lesson. Each two-page spread is filled with 100 adorable creatures, from scampering mice to burrowing moles. Some of them are captioned with silly phrases or interactions (there’s even a fart joke with one mole, that probably isn’t too funny to the mole behind him but hilarious to the kindergarten set!), and all are illustrated in a big-eyed, colorfully cartoonish fashion. While all pages feature 100 of something, some pages ask readers to answer different questions that involve counting or sorting the objects, and the final page even challenges children to find one particular creature for each spread. (Not surprisingly, the gassy mole appears here, too!)
I love that Sebe brings all the items together near the end, in groups of ten, to illustrate that ten tens equal one hundred– exactly the math lesson that my daughter’s class is learning as they chart the school days. Look, learning can be fun, kids! (And it can even use bathroom humor while it’s doing it!) Let’s Count to 100! is a great book for any child, but certainly with that 100th day of school right around the corner, now’s the perfect time to read it together.
Dawn’s fascination with children’s literature is fulfilled on a regular basis with her own children, as well as with the preschool class entrusted to her care each day. When she’s not in the classroom, she tries to blog now and again at my thoughts exactly.