100th Day Of School Welcomed At Middle Gate

 Eliza Hallabeck

In different rooms of Middle Gate students welcomed the 100th Day of School on Thursday, February 11, in different ways.

In one classroom students counted place value units to count 100 out of a combination of ones, fives, and tens. In another classroom students attempted to build tinfoil boats that could float with 100 unit cubes inside them.

And in second grade teacher Kristine Benton’s classroom, students wrote about what they will be like at 100 years old.

“If I live to be 100,” Nathan Stewart wrote for the class assignment, “I will have 13 animals.”

Next to him, Eamon Doherty had a different answer for the assignment.

“If I live to be 100,” Eamon wrote, “someone will tell me to get the mail, and I’ll say, ‘I’m tired. You get it.’”

Fourth graders in Linda Baron and Ellen Therrien’s classes worked on creating a pictograph of why people wear their shoes. The students sampled 50 people in the school for responses, to equal 100 shoes.

Math/science specialist Pam Fagan’s room was decorated with 100th Day of School projects marking the 14th annual all-school math day.

Ms Fagan started celebrating the 100th day of school with students 24 years ago when she was a kindergarten teacher at the school. For the past 14 years of being the math and science specialist, the event has been a schoolwide celebration of the number 100.

New to this year’s all school math day celebration was a coin collection drive to raise money for rebuilding efforts in Haiti. The drive was overseen by the school’s PTA, and each classroom in the school collected coins for the drive. The money will be donated to Habitat for Humanity. After being counted, PTA members brought the money to Newtown Savings Bank for a final count, and the school raised an estimated $2500 for the cause.