100th Day of School Scavenger Hunt

What You Need:

• Sheet of paper with a “Rainbow Chart,” to be created (Step #2 below)
• Crayons of various colors
• Pencil

What You Do:

1. Explain to your child the meaning of the 100th day of school. Tell him that to celebrate he will go on a scavenger hunt to find 100 objects in his home or school.
2. Create a “Rainbow Chart” on the paper. Do this by making a chart with six columns going across the paper (turn an 8 ½ x 11 size paper sideways in “landscape” format). At the top of each column, write these six words in their matching crayon colors: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, and Purple. Tell your child that these are the main colors in a rainbow. (Technically a rainbow has Indigo and Violet; “purple” is fine for a preschooler.)
3. Tell your child that for the hunt, he should find 100 objects total (some in each different color). He’ll record objects in his chart according to their color. For a red pencil, he would note it as an object under the “Red” column.
4. How your child records objects depends on his writing skills. The easiest way is to make a hash mark for each red object under the “Red” column, one for each orange object under “Orange,” etc. Help him count total marks as they get close to 100.
5. A more advanced preschooler can practice pre-writing skills. He could draw a small picture of each object, or write letters or words, perhaps with your help.

How many purple objects did he find? How many green ones? Which column had the most number of objects? Asking these questions make the scavenger hunt educational as well as fun!