This week Edward celebrated his 100th day of kindergarten. I had heard of this milestone from the experiences of Edward's older cousins, but I didn't fully appreciate the gravity of the occasion until Edward's experience. He was WAY into it. Each kid was asked to bring 100 of something from home--suggestions included 100 Cheerios on a necklace or 100 paperclips in a jar. Edward decided on 100 Legos (Lord knows, we have enough!) so we set about sorting 100 identical sized pieces in all different colors. I thought this would be the easiest visual representation of 100 and also the highest likelihood of all the pieces returning home.

Edward told his teacher his plan, and she said he'd have more fun actually constructing something out of 100 pieces. So we carefully substituted pieces of various sizes to our original set-aside stash as he built this: a school and playground. Kind of hard to see the playground here, but there's a red slide, a horizontal bar (white/blue) and a bench (yellow/blue) behind the school. Inside the school, he finally had a use for one of the three square pieces that have simple arithmetic on them, which, in fact, are relics of one of the only Lego sets I owned as a child (separate from my brothers' stash): a school.

Each kid also brought 100 pieces of something edible to combine into a big snack mix. Apparently there were lots of mini-marshmallows and M&Ms, cereal and goldfish crackers. We sent candy corn, as I had a bag stashed away that I'd picked up for 50 cents after Halloween this year. At the time I had bribery on the brain, but this was just as useful.

While the 100th day was Thursday, Edward was equally excited for today, 101 day. This stuck me as odd at first, but the note home explained that many kids this age think the way to continue counting from 100 is to jump to 200, 300, 400, and so on. Thus the equal emphasis/importance of 101 day. It had a dog/dalmatian theme.

Next up, groundhog day next week! Not really a celebration day, but it happens to be Edward's turn to bring snack that day and he asked if he could bring something groundhog-related. I was not sure such a thing existed, so I turned to my trusty friend Google to search for "groundhog day snacks." I was horrified to discover that the results included recipes for ACTUAL GROUNDHOGS! O.M.G.

There were a few ideas for kids snacks, but they appeared to be primarily cupcakes with chocolate chip and/or raisin eyes, which I found less than inspiring. I had Edward convinced that we could make Chex mix "puppy chow" and call it "groundhog chow." But then in conversation with his teacher, she suggested honey and chocolate teddy grahams, which they will affix to regular graham crackers with frosting--the honey teddy is the groundhog, standing in the snow (frosting) as the groundhog and the chocolate teddy lays flat as the shadow. You know, there's a certain creative genius possessed only by kindergarten teachers.