It’s the beginning of the new school year, so what better time to think about the time-honored tradition of counting to the 100th Day of School? Many teachers have routines for counting the days to the 100th day, but I want to propose using ten-frames.  You can address a number of  Kinder and 1st grade standards with this simple daily routine!

Just print out  blank ten-frames, grab yourself some colored Avery sticky dots, and you’re ready to go. Be sure to use either one color of dots, or vary the color in groups of 5 to help students subitize groups of 5 and 10 on the ten-frames.

Questions for Whole-Group Lessons:

There are so many directions you can take your questioning. To help you better visualize how the conversations might go, I’ve used the number 47 in this example:

•How many days have we been in school? (47) How do you know it’s 47? (The 4 tens are 40, then I saw 5 and 2 more, so that’s 47)
•Describe 47 using tens and ones. (4 tens and 7 ones) Can anyone describe it a different way? (3 tens and 17 ones, 2 tens and 27 ones, 1 ten and 37 ones, or 47 ones)
•How many more days until we reach 50 days (3). How do you know? How many more until the 100th day? (53) How do you know?
•What’s one more than 47? (48) What’s one less than 47? (46)
•How would we write 47 in expanded form? (47 = 40 + 7)
•Let’s start at 17 and  count around the circle until we get to 47.