At Putnam Valley Elementary School February is an especially busy month. Not only is there a week-long winter recess to re-energize everyone with the winter “blahs,” but there are also Presidents’ Day discussions about the lives and contributions of both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, Black History month projects, and best of all, the 100th Day Celebration.

Anyone who has attended or sent a child to PVES in recent memory will recall that the observance, which marks the 100th day since school started in the fall, has a slightly different flavor every year in every classroom. Teachers use the celebration as an opportunity both for fun and for learning. The concept of one hundred is critically important to a decimal based math or metric system, and there are infinite ways to explore and demonstrate just what 100 means.

One parent remembered her child gluing exactly one hundred Cheerios to a poster to shape the number 100. Another parent reminisced about assembling collections of 100 of various items from rocks to M&Ms to bugs. This year, on February 25, 2009, in Ms. Deb Sperlings’s first grade class, students wore special glasses and played with giant one hundred dollar bills in addition to more serious projects. The photos below show some of the happy participants.