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Horizon second graders use the 100th day of school as an opportunity to help others


Students in Annette Driggers second class with some of the can food items they collected and crazy hats they designed with 100 items on them. Girls standing (left to right) Bethany Stoots, Rileigh Glassman, Cassidy Lefoy, Samantha Turner, Ashley Baragona. Girls Kneeling: Thais Arslanbekov, Marisa Cothren. Boys Standing: Riley Baker, Ben Conway, K.J. Fields, Quenton Hubbard. Boys Kneeling: Bryce League, Aidan Newby, Nicholas Marden, Daniel Rudd, Brenan Cooley.

It has become an annual tradition for students at area elementary schools to celebrate the 100th day of school. Teachers use the occasion as a perfect time to have fun with the number 100 in very creative ways. For example, some classes had students find innovative ways to wear 100 buttons on their shirts, others used the day for a history lesson on what people were like 100 years ago. There was a 100 piece puzzle contest at one school where small groups of children raced each other completing their puzzles. There are endless ways teachers found to incorporate this fun day with learning.

One teacher at Horizon took this a step further and used the day to teach her second grade class about helping others.

“I was trying to come up with something different for a 100th day project that could be ‘service oriented’, so, I challenged the children to bring in 100 cans of soup, or any food, that we could donate to The Downtown Rescue Mission,” said Annette Driggers. “The children wanted it to be a contest between the boys and girls, and ended up bringing a total of 309 cans of food to school.”

The boys claimed the bragging rights this year, bringing in 163 to the girls’ 146. “The real winners are the people getting the food,” said student Thais Arslanbekov.

“We discussed the shelter a lot; why you might be in a shelter, who went, what they do there, etc.  It was a meaning, and powerful discussion everyday,” Driggers said. “ I was tickled that Thais and the other children, understood why we were doing this.  I took the food to the Downtown Rescue Mission and they were thrilled as their donations had been down this month.  They couldn’t believe a class of children could bring in so much food!”