"I want to count 100 pennies," she said. "I want to tape them to posterboard."
One hundred pennies on posterboard will be really heavy, I told her.
"I can carry it," she said.
We don't have enough tape, I told her.
"We can use glue," she said.
Finally I blurted: Pennies are boring!
That gave her pause; but then she insisted, "Pennies aren't boring."
So my daughter spent an hour attaching 100 pennies to posterboard with 100 pieces of tape, proudly labeling it, "100 pennys on poster bord." She also wrote three questions about her project across the back, quizzing my husband and my son and myself repeatedly.
It's actually not that heavy. She folded it in half and carried it to class herself.
***
When you're six, posterboard is not boring. Pennies are not boring. In fact both pennies and posterboard are rare objects when you're six; it's only in high school, I think, that a person learns to groan over such stock in trade.
***
Over dinner we talked about how 100 pennies equals a dollar, my husband and I joking about what they might say at the grocery store if handed 100 pieces of posterboard with 100 pennies taped to each. (This idea astonished the children, who hadn't really understood that a dollar bill and a hundred pennies are equal.) I should take a picture of that posterboard, I said, and email it to Planet Money2.
1 100th day of school. Apparently people celebrate this day across the U.S. I'd never heard of it before.
5 comments:
"...quizzing my husband and my son and myself repeatedly."
Having read this blog a couple of times, I must admit that I'm a little surprised. Shouldn't it be, "...quizzing my husband and my son and me repeatedly?
We had to do similar things in kindergarten & first grade - but not second! Huzzah!
Recently, though, we've been working on the money conversions. Just this morning I traded in a lot of change for dollar bills - lightening her wallet at the expense of my own.
Anon, you are right. That is a grammatical error.
Magpie -- I don't really mind the 100 Days project. My son fights these things tooth & nail but my daughter likes projects; she's fun to work with.
My point, which I failed utterly to make, apparently, is that what strikes an adult as a "creative" and "interesting" project != a child's opinion of creative & interesting.
I am glad that we seem to have gone past the point of celebrating 100 days. There's nothing worse than having to do that project at the last minute--sitting in the house, wondering what you have one hundred of.
We did buttons last year, I think. The first graders all though it was beyond awesome--I, on my 4th year of 100 day projects? Not so much.
I'd never hear of this either but Ada did it too.
By the way, as a state employee working on a statewide program that needs to work for people across the state, I think a lot about the non-Willamette valley population. (plus, isn't Bend the 5th largest metro area in the state? Not like you are in John Day...
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