This week was our 100th Day of School! To celebrate the occasion, we transformed our school into a school from 1915. We did away with technology (bye bye ActivBoards and iPads!).
It was really fun, but really hard to find accurate information. We ended up finding some information from the late 1800’s and adjusted it to what we thought it would be like. We were as authentic as we could be. We covered surfaces with black paper to use as chalk boards.
We rearranged our desks to sit in strait rows instead of pods. We made paper aprons for the girls to wear. We taught arithmetic, reading, recitation, penmenship, music, history and geography. It was so different from our usual day.
One of my favorite parts was saying “Children should be seen, not heard.” Whenever a child spoke when they weren’t supposed to. When they came to school the next day, I think they really appreciated that we have a social classroom where students are encouraged to talk to each other in their learning.
We decorated the hallway too. We did silhouette images of a horse and buggy, a girl riding her bicycle, a child walking and an automobile.
Beside those, we had slates that showed how many students used that transportation to go to school. As our classes toured the hallway, they noticed that only 1 person rode a car and 2 people rode a bicycle. They were amazed that people walked everywhere!
We also had images from the early 1900s that we blew up. We used construction paper to make them look like windows so the perspective would be that you inside the schoolhouse looking out.
One of the 2nd grade teacher’ mom is a retired art teacher so she made us decorations to put in the room.
My students have begged me to leave them up so I did! This morning, they took their breakfast pizza and held it in front of the wood burning stove- they said they were cooking it!
Someone brought a car for the kids to look at-
It was awesome!
I hope we do this again next year! It was such a wonderful learning opportunity!
How did you celebrate the 100th Day of School?
