Our youngest students always have big smiles on Fridays at lunch time, as it's PIZZA DAY! Our dedicated Food Services team prepares homemade pizza for all who are interested! (You can smell it being prepared in the hallways, too!)
Take a peek at our youngest ES students with their traditional, pepperoni or "grilled cheese" slice options! Remember, everyone eats from free! (But, some student families do put funds in their children's "My School Bucks" accounts to purchases extras, like ice cream, or on pizza days... an extra slice!)
MARSHMALLOW FARMING?? Well…maybe…
Kimberly McDermott’s ES second-graders completed a fun and creative lesson about marshmallow farming this past Tuesday, April 1. Did you know that marshmallows grow only under the best conditions? Students learned about critical marshmallow climatology, including how long it takes for a marshmallow bush to grow and for marshmallows to blossom as well as all the important aspects of marshmallow harvesting.
A marshmallow farming video served as guidance for them to complete a marshmallow life cycle worksheet; and an art component was added to this science lesson when students were tasked with drawing a marshmallow bush and labeling its parts. The farm even sent Mrs. McDermott fresh marshmallows for students to sample as well!
What an innovative STEM lesson that combined art and food and….APRIL FOOLS FUN! (Did you spoof anyone on April Fool’s Day?)
Lindsey McKernan’s ES kindergartners have been using “manipulatives” during math lessons! They using beans and chips to help with counting so they can visually see “how many” there are as they dive deeper in addition and subtraction work!
In this instance, the counters have a different color on each side. When using the beans, students counted how many red, and then added in the white ones. For the red chips, students counted how many they started with then took some away and counted how many we were left. Manipulatives help us visualize our adding and subtracting.
Math manipulatives are beneficial in kindergarten because they help children understand abstract concepts concretely, enhance engagement, and develop problem-solving skills by allowing them to physically interact with mathematical ideas. There are so many different types of manipulatives, too, such as counters, blocks, beads, geometric shapes, tiles, cubes and more!
Understanding digraph sounds is an important ELA skill for kindergarteners! Digraph sounds are important because they are two letters that come together to make a completely new sound such as (/th/, /sh/, /ch/, /ng/, and /qu/). Ask the kindergartener in your life about this!
Take a peek at Tiffany Guareno’s ES kindergarteners, who recently played a fun Digraph Headbands Game where they walked around the room, found a partner, read the word on their partner's headband (which contained a digraph) and practiced writing the word What a fun way to reinforcing these special sounds!
Learning digraph sounds is crucial for developing strong reading and spelling skills because they help children decode words accurately and fluently, and represent sounds correctly in written language.
Spring is here! And our youngest students are learning about some of the signs of Springtime they may be seeing outside!
Did you know Springtime is a good time of the year for “rainbow spotting?” That’s because spring weather patterns often feature sunshine alongside rain showers, a perfect combination for rainbow formation.
After Marjori Bobish’s ES transitional kindergarteners learned about the signs of Spring, they made edible rainbows using Fruit Loops cereal and marshmallows! What a fun project for these little ones, which, by the way, also gives them some fine motor skill practice!
•Rainbows are formed when sunlight passes through raindrops, causing the light to bend and reflect, creating the colorful arc.
•The "April showers" proverb is a good reminder that spring is a time when rain is common, and when combined with sunshine, rainbows become more frequent.
Last Friday evening's Elementary School Family Folk Dance night was so much fun! We love seeing families gathering together to take part in activities...it's even better when students can show their families what they're learning in the classroom...in this case, it's music class!
Thank you to everyone who participated and a special thank you to ES Music Teacher Cliff Loretto for putting this evening together!
Leyla Johnson’s ES physical education students have been working on flexing and extending their muscles, moving through dynamic and static balances using different bases of support.
Students got to pick a letter of the alphabet or a number and try to create the shape of the letter or number with their body alone or with a partner. They had a lot of fun being creative and trying to guess what letters and numbers their classmates were making.
Then they got to try a variety of yoga poses and balances, along with working on mindful breathing to help them calm down and relax. They discussed how taking slow breaths in through their nose and out through their mouth can be helpful if they are ever worried, angry, upset or even out of breath from exercise to help calm down their minds and their bodies.
PLUS: As part of this, Mrs. Johnson’s music choices even looked to help set the mood for the class: Classic artists like Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald and Peggy Lee! Take a peek; these little ones were having a great time!
ES second-grade teacher Gemma Lyon has trialed a “Book-to-art” Club with a second-grade group and it’s been a great success!
This group has been using art and all of their senses in a creative approach to dive further into the meaning of the text. The club, plus ELA boost sessions, incorporates a hands-on creative project that participants make during the discussion to extend and expand their understanding of the text. Their art is directly aligned to the focus text and author study.
Students explored author Eric Carle and took a deep dive into some history of his life and his illustrative style, creating their own characters that follow Carle's style. Students created their own textured paper as Carle himself typically used and then collaborated and shared their paper to create art.
“I selected authors for this club based on popularity for this age group,” she said. “Most children are already familiar with Eric Carle and enjoyed digging into the familiar characters that they have grown up reading. The phonics boost is added in, as we do shared readings at each session. The students take turns reading and supporting each other through decoding those unfamiliar words based on the reading strategies they are being explicitly taught in their home rooms during ELA.”
With a phonics boost intertwined throughout the session, students are responding and connecting to literature through the use of visual arts as well as revisiting beginning reading skills. As a bonus, they’ve explored how color, lines, shapes, drawing, painting and other elements of art communicate messages to the viewer. Take a look!
Ilana Kaufman’s second-grade art students grade students are exploring fiber arts by learning how to weave on a loom.
Here’s the fun part: Students made their own looms by painting paper plates with decorative line details! Students are using yarn and an “under/over” repetitive pattern to create a circle weaving work of art. Each design is beautiful and unique!
Paper plate looms also give students a chance to further build fine motor skills. There are even some math connections, too, as students have to think about measuring and pattern making.
Author and Minisink Valley parent Stephanie Lock visited the Elementary School on March 14 for a “Meet the Author” visit, sponsored by the ES PTO!
Mrs. Lock’s book, “If Goldfish were Bluebirds,” is a story about self-acceptance that follows five animal characters' thought processes in wishing they were like other animals. However, they ultimately come to realize that their own attributes are what makes them so special and unique. The story is a great reaffirmation to everyone that we all are unique and special!
Thank you to the ES PTO for arranging this very fun visit!
"Top of the morning" to you and Happy Saint Patrick's Day!
Meghan Donahue's ES first-graders have made some spectacular leprechaun traps with the intention of capturing any mischievous leprechauns that may have made their way into their classroom. Students will be arriving shortly, so it'll be interesting to see if any were trapped!
Leprechaun traps are craft projects usually made from household items like boxes, tin cans, or paper, and these little students made
The tradition of leprechaun trapping is similar to the Christmas tradition of leaving cookies out for Santa Claus.
Sally Mankoo’s ES kindergarteners, like other district kindergarteners, have been learning about seasons and weather. In the last lesson of the unit, they learned a big word: Meteorologist! Students also learned about cumulus, stratus and cirrus clouds as well.
A project aligned with these lessons was the creation of “cloud spotters.” Students made their unique “spotters” so when they went outside, they could identify the type of clouds they saw. They glued the cloud pictures on their spotters decorated them with paint and other personalization items and used them during a recent windy day to identify the cumulus clouds in the sky! Take a look!
Cumulus clouds are puffy and white like cotton balls, while stratus clouds look like flat white sheets hovering overhead. Cirrus clouds come with rain-free weather and look like white wisps high up in the sky.
WHAT A GREAT, GREAT NIGHT!
So much fun and fundraising (the amount raised is still being tallied) at the March 12 Minisink Valley vs. Harlem Wizards game! THANK YOU to everyone who had a part in its success and to everyone who came out to be awesome spectators! There's four amazing photo galleries on the district's Facebook page for everyone to view: https://www.facebook.com/MinisinkValleyCSD
For the record...our team was super gracious and "allowed" the Wizards, our visiting guests, to win in a 63-46 final!
REMINDER: HAVE YOU SIGNED UP?
OPEN TO ALL AGES....DON'T MISS OUT, there's limited seating and a similar program held last fall SOLD OUT!
The High School Art Club is hosting a Spring fundraiser called “Printing” on Tuesday, March 25 at 4:30 p.m. in Room 217 at the high school.
In this workshop, participants will learn the art of printmaking on fabric. They will create stamps and use ink as a medium to make beautiful, handmade, wearable pr hangable art.
Participants will be guided by a talented Minisink Valley Art Club student to create one-of-a-kind artwork.
Reservations are required by scanning the QR code on the flyer below. Refreshments and snacks are included in the admission price:
Adults: $12
Children/students: $10
Siblings discount: $5 per additional sibling
Cash only, payable at the door.
All proceeds will go toward art scholarships, museum field trips for art students, additional supplies for our art club studio, and other events.
Cliff Loretto’s ES K-2 students are learning a fun longways dance called “Alabama Gal” in preparation for the upcoming ES Family Folk Dance March 21. Take a peek at this group --- they’re having lots of fun learning the steps of the dance so they’re fully prepared to dance with their adult partners.
All students are also learning a mixer dance and a circle dance as well as a warm-up and cool down in preparation for this upcoming big night!
•"Longways," "mixer," and "circle dances" refer to different types of folk dances that can be taught to students, often involving specific formations and movements.
•Longways dance: This dance formation involves two lines of dancers facing each other, with partners standing across from each other.
•Mixer dance: A dance where students move around and change partners, often with a call-and-response or a specific sequence of movements.
•Circle dance: A dance where students stand in a circle, semicircle, or curved line, sometimes with partners, and move together to music.
The co-teach model offers unique instructional opportunities! Take a peek at Angela Dombal’s and Bridget Kelly’s ES kindergarteners busy at work with their Amplify ELA skills lessons! When the classroom’s timer goes off, the groups switch so they can practice both skills.
In this recent lesson, Mrs. Dombal used Amplify picture readers to introduce and teach the new tricky word “down” and later its opposite, “up.” "Down" is considered a tricky word because its pronunciation doesn't fully align with typical phonics rules, meaning a beginner reader might struggle to sound it out based solely on the letter sounds. The "ow" combination doesn't make its usual "ow" sound as in "cow" but instead produces a "doun" sound, making it an irregular spelling pattern that needs to be memorized as a whole.
At the same time, Mrs. Kelly reviewed new digraph sight words and then completed a chaining activity where students manipulated a sound or two within a word to create a new word. A digraph is two letters that work together to make one sound. For example, "ch" in "chin" and "ea" in "bread" are both digraphs.
•Tricky words for kindergarteners are words that don't follow the usual rules of spelling and pronunciation. They can also have unusual spellings or silent letters. Tricky words can be difficult for emergent readers because they haven't learned all the graphemes in the words. They can also be temporarily or permanently tricky. A "grapheme" in phonics is a letter or group of letters that represents a single sound (phoneme) in written language.
•A "chaining activity" in Kindergarten ELA refers to a phonics-based activity where students build a series of words by changing only one sound at a time, essentially creating a "chain" of related words, helping them practice decoding and encoding skills by focusing on letter-sound connections and identifying patterns in spelling while reinforcing phonemic awareness in young learners.
As part of the Elementary School’s ongoing commitment to character education, the ICON Dance Team of New York City visited the school today, March 5, for a high powered and colorful show focusing on music and dance and which included an important conversation on spotting and stopping bullying, respecting yourself and others, taking responsibility for your actions and leading a positive life.
The students were mesmerized with the talent of the dance trio and understood their important messages! Ask your student about today’s assembly and please continue this important conversation!
Like all district first-graders, Meghan Donahue’s ES first-graders have a unit in their science studies focusing on astronomy.
Mrs. Donahue kicked off this unit by showing her students how to create their own eclipses! Students used their Groundhog Day lesson knowledge about shadows and light to help enhance their knowledge and understanding of lunar and solar eclipses.
How fun is this? Her students used Play-Doh to re-create moon and Earth models, using pencils to hold those models in place with additional Play-Doh at the base. Then, they used flashlights to create shadows. Her young students moved their “moons and earths” in an “orbit” to create lunar and solar eclipses. Play-Doh pencil eclipses are a fun hands-on activity that helps children learn about eclipses by seeing how the relative positions of the three celestial bodies create an eclipse.
There was more unique learning fun! Later, students made their own moon rocks using baking soda and water and a little bit of coco powder for color. These rock blobs were frozen overnight. Then, they with the help of a spoon or dropper, they used vinegar to dissolve their moon rocks! What a great activity helping students to learn about space, the scientific process and even how vinegar reacts with baking soda!
Learning how to alphabetize words is important because it helps develop a foundational understanding of sequence and order! Tracey Salinardi’s ES second-graders, like all district second-graders, practice this important skill on a regular basis. Students recently took a list of self-generated random words and then practiced alphabetizing them…. sometimes they needed to go to the third letter in a word to make sure it was alphabetized correctly!
Understanding alphabetical order is crucial for accessing information in dictionaries, encyclopedias, libraries, and other reference materials, making it a key fundamental skill for reading, research, and organization in everyday life Students quickly learn that alphabetizing words allows them to quickly locate specific information by recognizing patterns in the alphabet.
The practice of alphabetizing words originated in ancient times, with the earliest evidence found in Northwest Semitic scribes using the abjad system during the first millennium BCE. Historians note the most notable early example was the library catalog called "Pinakes," created by scholar Callimachus at the Great Library of Alexandria, where scrolls were likely arranged alphabetically by the first letter of the author's name, marking one of the first effective uses of alphabetical order as a cataloging method.
Take a peek at the recent ES Scholastic Book Fair! We bet a lot of students have some great books to read at home! Thank you to the ES PTO for organizing and overseeing this wonderful event!
Book fairs are a fun and engaging way to introduce young children to a wide variety of books, allowing them to choose titles that spark their interest, which can foster a lifelong love of reading while giving them the power to select their own books! Book fairs can help build excitement around reading within the classroom and at home, encouraging family engagement with books. See more photos on the district's Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/MinisinkValleyCSD
