Northeast Elementary School hosted its first in-person event of the year for families on May 27. Summer Family Learning Night featured a variety of English language arts, math and science activities.

Teachers and staff worked together to create a safe and engaging learning experience for pre-K students and their families. Learning centers allowed children to build upon lessons throughout the school year. Children practiced their letter and sound recognition with alphabet BINGO, enhanced their knowledge of numbers in musical squares and explored life cycles by planting seeds. They also learned how to keep their literacy skills sharp over the summer by keeping journals. 

Educational resources were also provided to the families including take-home activities for the summer and information from the Amityville Public Library. 

There are 26 letters to learn, and pre-K students at Northeast Elementary School in the Amityville Union Free School District are taking time to master each one. 

Every week, students are introduced to a new “letter of the week” with different activities to help them understand how it sounds, how to write it and what words start with the letter. Through class discussions, craft projects and videos, children build their letter recognition skills as they continue on their path toward becoming better readers and writers and building their vocabularies. 

In celebrating the letter “T," students in Jacqueline Floyd’s class watched a video, where they moved along by writing uppercase and lowercase T’s with their fingers. Teacher Andrew Babington created a giant “T” with pictures of different objects that start with the letter, such as a table, a taxi and a turtle. 

Children in Lisa Iannotta’s class are making a book with all of the different letters of the week with pictures made from their handprints. Each week, they add a new page with an illustration of an animal or food that starts with the letter. For “T” week, they made tigers with orange paint. At the end of the year, her students will take their books home as a memento.

Through song and dance, pre-K students at Northeast Elementary School celebrate the important women in their lives! Staff members also share Mother’s Day messages.

Click here to watch the video.

To close out Autism Awareness Month in April, students in the Amityville Union Free School District brought attention to the disorder that is estimated to affect 1 in 54 children nationwide.

Students and staff at Edmund W. Miles Middle School took part in the Light It Up Blue campaign, and were encouraged to wear blue to school on Thursdays and Fridays throughout April. The school also made a donation to Autism Speaks. 

Math chairperson Monica Martin said that students learned about the importance of accepting others for their differences as well as how to be inclusive of students with autism. 

Northeast Elementary School held its first autism awareness walk on April 29 and 30. Pre-K students walked four laps around the school garden.  During class time, they modeled awareness by being helpful, showing kindness, being a friend and sharing. The students received certificates of completion to bring home to their families.  

The warmer weather of spring means blooming flowers, plants and trees, and pre-K students at Northeast Elementary School explored the season of rebirth by getting their hands a little dirty.

In Lisa Carey’s class, children learned about the different parts of the flower, then made their own flowers using Play-Doh. They also planted lima bean and sunflower seeds in cups of dirt. Dyan Aversa’s pre-K students studied the lifecycle of a flower the different parts of a butterfly. They made crafts to highlight the growth pattern of a flower and planted bean seeds. 

A garden will soon be growing in Yvette Carmen’s class, but only she knows what will blossom. After reading “The Surprise Garden” by Zoe Hall, her students then made their own garden filled with mystery seeds. They planted the seeds, which came in different sizes, shapes and colors, and will keep daily growth logs. The children are excited to see what flowers and plants will soon be coming to their classroom.