what does 100 look like?

I admit it.

I’m an artist, and I will use art to teach almost anything.

Case in point — A few years ago, I used Damien Hirst’s spot paintings to explore the concept of 100 with my Grade Ones. Love them or hate them, the spot paintings are full of math.

My objectives were multiple. First of all, I wanted to work on the concept that 100 is ten groups of ten; and expanding on that, to find answers to the question — what does 100 look like? And thirdly, I wanted to do some interesting estimating. But you could also use the spot paintings to introduce or discuss multiplication, arrays, square numbers, and some aspects of basic geometry (with an older grade.)

Here is my lesson plan. I have a poster of Hirst’s painting Ergocalciferol (2007) which is useful, but the painting also appears in this linked slide show (slides 10 through 14). Either way, the art becomes the provocation for wondering and learning about number.


Damien Hirst Math

Show kids some of Damien Hirst's spot paintings. Use images from the Damien Hirst website or the slide show I have linked above.

Damien Hirst. Ergocalciferol. House paint on canvas. 2007.

Ask them to guess how many spots are in Ergocalciferol. Are there more than 100? (There are 425, but don’t tell them that yet.)

Introduce or review the concept of estimation as an informed guess. Hand out colour copies of all or part of Ergocalciferol, or — in the interest of honouring copyright — polka-dotted wrapping paper. Have the kids circle and cut out ten contiguous dots (in any shape they want). Compare the tens, which ones are the same? Which ones are different? Are they all equal in quantity/number? How do we know? (counting by ones or twos or fives) Compare their tens to the painting. How many of them do they think would fit into it?

Give them the same handouts again, but ask them to cut out 100 dots. They may have to work together with a friend or friends. Compare the different shapes of 100. Compare them to the painting.

Answer the question: are there more than 100 dots? How many hundreds do they think?

Hand out another copy of the painting if necessary. Have kids cut out ten straight lines of ten. Glue them together onto a white piece of paper and cut closely around the pieces they have glued on, so that they have a 10 x 10 grid of dots. Compare these to the painting. Now can they tell (or guess) how many hundreds there are in the painting? Is it easier or harder to count when the dots are in lines/grids?

Note: This whole lesson could also be done using bingo dabbers and having the kids make their own tens and hundreds.


Extend the Lesson

Make their own spot paintings:

• Use Smarties or M&Ms and glue them onto paper with white glue or royal icing. 
• Or get a bunch of paint chips and a circular hole punch (1” or less) and cut out spots. Challenge kids to create compositions of 100 dots without repeating the same colour.

Play a spot painting as a rhythm on drums or other percussion instruments. Talk with the kids about which colours look like strong/loud beats, and which look like quiet beats. Have them “read” a line of a Damien Hirst spot painting and play the rhythm of it on their drums together.

hundreds and hundreds....

I don't know what your timeline is, but at my school the hundredth day of the year is coming up next week. So my brain has been whirring and clicking and generating new games for 100 Day. Here are a few things I've been developing and test-driving.


1. Mosaic Hundred Boards

I took a 12 x 12 panel of 1" mosaic tiles that was left over from an art/science project two years ago, and cut it down to 10 x 10. I removed some of the tiles from the backing mesh, but left most of them attached. Then I labelled the tiles with the numbers from 1 to 100 -- black ink for the tiles that are set, and coloured ink for the ones that are removable. I put the whole thing in a pizza box -- a clean one, of course -- because it's the right shape and it's sturdy. This would be beautiful in a wooden tray or a 12 x 12" picture frame, but for now this works.

To play, kids remove the tiles with the coloured numbers and turn them upside down. They take turns flipping the pieces over and fitting them back into the correct places in the hundred board mosaic. To make it more exciting, I set a timer for 2.5 minutes. (There are roughly 30 pieces to place in the board.) Kids work together and race against the clock.



2. Blind Hundred Board



















I have a tray with 100 compartments that I made four or five years ago. The tray is wooden, and it is fitted with 100 square plastic wedding favour boxes or lids. Between the tray and the the boxes, I have made a hundred board out of poster board.

Today I filled the tray with cotton balls to hide the numbers, and provided a cup filled with popsicle sticks labelled with the numbers 1 to 100. Kids took turns drawing popsicle sticks and finding the square on the tray that corresponds to that number. They removed the cotton ball from that square. If they had it right -- ie. the number in the square matched the number on the popsicle stick -- they got to keep the popsicle stick and put the cotton ball back. The child with the most sticks at the end of play wins.

You could use pompoms instead of cotton balls, but they'd be more expensive. You could add an element of fine motor challenge by requiring the kids to use tweezers or tongs or chopsticks to remove the cotton balls. The essence of the challenge is that they are able to find numbers up to 100 based on the position and relation of the number to the rest of the grid. They are able to understand tens and ones as they are arrayed.



3. Numberless Hundred Board


























Two years ago I did an art project with my class in which we painted a painting with 100 colourful spots on it, in a 10 x 10 array. I have saved one of these and sometimes use it for math.

I ask kids to find the spot that is number 73 or number 42, or some other number between 1 and 100. They need to apply their knowledge of tens and ones, counting down the rows by tens, and across the rows by ones, until they find it. In learning to do this, they also develop a sense of the quantity of a number. How far down the chart it is tells them how big it is in relation to 100. Spatial, relational and quantitative understanding of number is developed when the dependence on numerical sequence is disrupted by removing the numbers.