Across the district, students and staff celebrated Lunar New Year and the Year of the Rabbit through events, activities and schoolwide displays.

Nassakeag Elementary School held a parade led by Mr. Prinzo’s sixth grade class. Students created a large dragon puppet that they carried through the halls. In Chinese culture, the dragon symbolizes good luck, strength and health. The sixth graders marched along to the beat of drums and gongs, which are traditional instruments in Chinese New Year celebrations. After the parade, classes held their own festivities where families were invited to help students make crafts. One class created rabbit puppets and wore red, a color to represent prosperity.

Mrs. Kane’s kindergarten class at W.S. Mount Elementary School learned about Lunar New Year traditions. Students learned about the meaning of the color red and what the Year of the Rabbit symbolizes. They created a display for the school’s main hallway that reads “Gung Hey Fat Choy,” wishing everyone happiness and prosperity. Additionally, the kindergartners made smaller signs that say, “Xin Nian Kuai Le,” or “Happy New Year,” as well as paper lanterns. The class dedicated the display to Hui Jing Eggleston.

Arrowhead Elementary School students learned about Lunar New Year through the morning announcements. Two fifth graders, Olivia and Vivian, celebrate the holiday and wrote an essay about its meaning and traditions. They read their essay aloud to the entire building.

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Date Added: 1/24/2023

Members of the fourth grade chorus at Nassakeag Elementary School spread holiday cheer during arrival on Dec. 14. Students kicked off the day by singing holiday songs as students walked into Nassakeag from the bus circle. Students were excited to sing along and get in the holiday spirit.

Date Added: 12/14/2022

Fifth grade students at Nassakeag Elementary School channeled their inner environmental engineers during an in-class STEM challenge. Students were given a scenario where they were tasked with joining the clean-up effort after an oil spill. They could only use the provided materials to clean up all the oil from the feathers and the water.

Students worked collaboratively to come with the best ideas to tackle the challenge within time constraints. Through this science activity, they learned the impact humans can have on the environment, as well as the difficulties of engineering a solution to an environmental problem. Additionally, students learned the long-term impacts of these problems, as they were unable to completely clean the water.

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Date Added: 12/13/2022

Sixth grade students at Nassakeag Elementary School were recently visited by Ward Melville High School student Ella O’Connor for a discussion about poetry. Last year, O’Connor was named Suffolk County’s first teen poet laureate after winning a Walt Whitman Student Poetry Contest in collaboration with the Suffolk County Legislature.

O’Connor led the group in a presentation about poetry and the power of words. She empowered the group through writing, while focusing on the following themes: youth can change the world, poetry can change minds and what you say matters.

During the presentation, O’Connor tasked the sixth graders with writing their own poems. They followed the theme, “What is something I can do to change the world,” and were guided step-by-step through the writing process. Students first brainstormed and mapped out their ideas. They decided on rhythmic structures and chose writing devices such as similes, metaphors and alliteration to include. O’Connor encouraged students to enter these poems, as well as other original pieces of writing, in local and regional competitions.

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Date Added: 11/28/2022