After coloring cornucopia placemats, nursery students in Ms. Lara's class enjoyed a little Thanksgiving feast! Sugar pumpkins decorated the tables as students snacked on pretzels and cupcakes iced in autumn colors: red, orange, and yellow!

On today's crisp and sunny autumn morning, students jogged and gobbled around HNOM school for the annual "Turkey Trot"in gym class! Thank you, Mr. Smith, for coordinating the fun event! In Ms. Lara's class, nursery students crafted construction paper turkey hats in anticipation of the outdoor exercise! They also posed for a photo next to the inflatable lawn turkey!

At our morning prayer service before the Thanksgiving recess, HNOM's choir sang and played the drums for a beautifully reverent start to the school day! With the 3rd grade's school-wide "Gratitude Leaves" project displayed on a bulletin board, every grade level's notes of thankfulness were assembled together for the perfect fall backdrop!

Throughout HNOM, autumn and Thanksgiving-themed projects decorate the walls and doors of classrooms to add a touch of warmth to the building! From turkey and pumpkin designs to leaves and coffee, the student projects embrace all the sights and smells of the season to express their gratitude! Click the title of this article to see more hallway displays!

After reading Melissa Sweet's picture book, "Balloons Over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy's Parade," Miss Cutrone's 4th grade class designed their own balloon characters and marched through our school hallways! The hands-on activity strengthened students' understanding of the first puppeteer, Tony Sarg, who created the giant balloons in the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade in NYC. As a creative, hands-on extension of the book, the activity helped students put themselves in the shoes of Mr. Sarg!

In Ms. Brown's ELA class, 7th graders read Roald Dahl's short story, "The Landlady," to conclude a unit on foreshadowing and suspense. In conjunction with the National Junior Honor Society's annual Thanksgiving Food Drive, 7th graders donated tea to bring to life the central plot device in the story. To analyze the importance of tea to the story's antagonist, students wrote explanatory paragraphs on index cards, which were arranged together to form a teapot display above the generous donations of green, black, and herbal teas!

Our technology and 6-8 science teacher, Mrs. Powell, hosted HNOM's annual STEM night for upper-elementary and middle school students. Students rotated through different challenges at each cafeteria table to collaborate and apply math, science, engineering, and math skills to mystery bags and building projects! A special thank you to Miss Cutrone, our 4th grade teacher, for attending the event!

In honor of Veterans' Day, kindergartners and first graders decorated hearts with red and blue to express their gratitude. After learning about those who help keep America safe and free, third grade students in Miss Sciortino's class penned letters to military heroes and service members.

In Miss Sciortino's class, third graders were tasked with using the resources available to them in their classroom to create a bridge. They were very clever in how they came up with successfully getting their bridges to stand tall and balanced!

After reading Kay Winters' picture book, "My Teacher for President," Mrs. Chesterton's kindergarten class held a mock vote to see who would win in a race between their teacher and a beloved book character, Pigeon, from Mo Willems' book series! In the fun, hands-on activity for Election Day, students counted up the ballots and graphed the results on a bar graph to determine the winner!

During a 1 pm assembly in  HNOM's gymnasium, middle school Student Council candidates read prepared, 2-minute speeches. The students in Grades 6-8 informed the student body of the talents and enthusiasms that they would bring to the leadership positions of Secretary, Treasurer, Vice President, or President. Third grade teacher, Miss Sciortino, organized the election and will oversee the Student Council this year! 

In Ms. Brown's ELA class, 7th graders were challenged to extend their understanding of how setting impacts mood in Kristen Lewis' short story, "The Nothing," through a "spooky tree" photo contest. In the text, a key setting detail that contributes to the story's uneasy mood is a tree "that had a face caught in a scream." Therefore, students had to find their own local "spooky tree" and explain why - if it were placed as a setting detail in a story - it would also give readers an ominous feeling. By identifying and explaining two specific "spooky" features of their chosen tree, 7th graders captioned their photos.  The winning photo is pictured, and the description read, "At Village Green Park, there is a tree with fallen leaves and burls/bumps on the trunk, which gives me an uneasy feeling. The fallen leaves are creepy because it makes the tree look like it is dying and has not been tended to. The five burls/bumps on the trunk make the tree spooky because they resemble the form of a baby that is trapped in the tree, which is unnerving." 

For individualized instruction and digital literacy, HNOM students engage with the math and reading iReady program on a weekly basis. Students navigate online lessons with the help of fun iReady characters, like Snargg, a horned dog-like alien who pops up in lessons and appears in the instruction videos. As a Friday surprise, Snargg came to HNOM to commend students on their iReady progress and to encourage them to keep up the great work!

After shopping at the Scholastic Book Fair, students visited different classrooms to read three Western-themed picture books: Charlie the Ranch Dog, Tornado Slim, and The Gingerbread Cowboy. Dressed up in homemade cowboy hats and sheriff badge souvenirs, students created special crafts for each book! Literacy night is an annual after-school event at HNOM! Thank you for making reading fun, Mrs. Magno, Mrs. Chesterton, Mrs. Onorato, Mrs. Casazza, Miss Fischer, and Mrs. Saggio!

In a Halloween STEM project, Mrs. Powell and Mrs. Saggio helped embed straws in paper cones that 2nd graders dressed up in purple cloaks and green faces to resemble witches. Then, with a string suspended from the loft to the floor in HNOM's gymnasium, 2nd graders watched in awe as their magical designs glided down like a witch on a broomstick!

To spread Halloween spirit around the school building and show camaraderie, HNOM teachers and staff dressed up as M&M's for Halloween. Our principal, Miss Ciminelli, continued the tradition of an annual costume theme for teachers, and Mrs. Chesterton, our Kindergarten teacher, coordinated the idea. In previous years, teachers were challenged to dress up as book characters and the Creation story. This year was sweet and simple! The candy characters brought smiles and vibrancy to HNOM this Halloween!

In Miss Fischer's first grade class, students painted sugar pumpkins with swirls of color! Our school cafeteria was transformed into an art studio with palettes of paint and tablecloths so that students could have fun with their messy, beautiful creations!

HNOM's Parent-Teacher League hosted their annual Halloween party, filling the schoolyard with decorated car trunks for "trick or treating," setting up a bone-chilling Limbo game in the gym, and covering tables with a plethora of craft materials, like pumpkin sticker books and fang-tastic wooden ornaments. Parents and HNOM students dressed up in costumes to celebrate the spooky season!

In Mrs. Chesterton's Kindergarten class, students read the classic rhyming poem, "Five Little Pumpkins," which teaches emotions vocabulary through the conversation of five gourds who each embody a different feeling, like happy, grumpy, angry, or sleepy. To recreate the five pumpkins sitting on a gate in the nursery rhyme, Kindergarten students then used shape building-blocks to construct a high and sturdy fence for some candy pumpkins!

With string and spider embellishments, 7th graders helped 2nd grade brainstorm intricate, insect-catching web designs to weave across a paper plate. Students then competed to see how many insect pieces would stay trapped in their webbing! Mrs. Powell, our K-8 technology and 6-8 science teacher, plans collaborative STEM activities to bridge our middle school and elementary classrooms for interpersonal learning, team-building, leadership skill development, and seasonal fun!