To celebrate the end of the school year, Kindergarteners had matching "Team Kindergarten" shirts!

Students in Grade K-4 read their own original poems to a panel of judges to compete in HNOM's 2nd Annual Poetry Contest. With trophies and student costumes, the contest was a magnificent celebration of April as "National Poetry Month." Thank you for organizing and hosting the event, Miss Cutrone!

This spring, Mrs. Chesterton's Kindergarten class is learning about life cycles in science. For a hands-on learning experience, caterpillars arrived to their classroom! The students are so excited to watch these caterpillars grow into butterflies!

The Diocese of Rockville Centre (DRVC) hosted its annual 5K to support Tomorrow's Hope on Saturday morning at St. Joseph's School in Garden City. Holy Name of Mary School was well-represented (despite the rain!) with administrative and faculty participants: Mrs. Ciminelli (principal), Mrs. Chesterton (kindergarten teacher), and Miss Faux (Math AIS teacher).

Each class at HNOM created a spiritual bouquet for Bishop Henning, a HNOM School graduate. Bishop Henning was appointed the Bishop of Providence, Rhode Island! Click the article's title to view the spiritual bouquets created by Kindergarten, first grade, and eighth grade!

In Mrs. Chesterton's class, kindergarten students learned all about Ruby Bridges, a civil rights activist who was the first African-American child to desegregate the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in Louisiana. Kindergarten students discussed what it means to be brave like Ruby and made connections to a time in their lives when they felt brave, too, through a schoolhouse craftivity!

As a collaborative activity between Mrs. Powell and Mrs. Chesterton, kindergarten students completed a STEM challenge using candy hearts. They had to make a prediction about how many candy hearts they thought they could stack before the tower fell. They then tested their predictions and stacked until their pastel towers collapsed!

To promote Dental Health Month this February, students from Nursery to Grade 2 gathered for a special presentation by Miss Lynn, who visited HNOM from New Wave Pediatric Dentistry & Orthodontics. Students learned about trips to the dentist, brushing techniques, and how to keep their teeth clean!

In Mrs. Chesterton's kindergarten class, students counted up 100 stickers, pom poms, and plastic critters to design a T-shirt with the craft items! On one shirt, 100 heart stickers were splattered. On another, 100 plastic bugs crawled along! Students also arranged pom poms into many themes and patterns. For example, pom poms were a rocky terrain for a truck, the winding body of Eric Carle's "Very Hungry Caterpillar" and Carl Fredrickson's balloons in the movie, UP!  Excellent counting and creativity, kindergarten!

With mini beach balls and hula hoops, PlayHooray hosted a "Movement & Music" class for students in Nursery, Pre-K, and Kindergarten. The 30-minute session focused on kinesthetic play that encourages socialization and develops fine and gross motor skills. Our early childhood students had a lot of fun moving to the music! Thanks for the special treat on Student Appreciation Day during Catholic Schools Week, PlayHooray!

Through a STEM collaboration with our technology teacher, Mrs. Powell, Kindergarten students in Mrs. Chesterton's class created snowmen that launched a pom pom in the air. Kindergarten had fun while learning basic concepts of physics!

Inspired by Chris Van Allsburg's classic picture book, "The Polar Express," Mrs. Chesterton's kindergarten class received train tickets and wore pajamas to enjoy the 2004 film adaptation and some hot cocoa! Students loved the immersive experience!

At this year's annual Christmas Concert in the church, HNOM's kindergarten class performed the story of Jesus' birth as described in the biblical gospels of Luke and Matthew.

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!

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!

As a fun, but didactic ,Halloween activity, Kindergarten students in Mrs. Chesterton's class identified beginning letter sounds in a Seesaw Activity to bring Frankenstein's monster to life on an iPad screen!

Kindergarten students designed their own apple boats during a fun fall STEM project! They got to choose the size of their apple and used a toothpick and construction paper to make a sail for the boat. Students made predictions about if their boat would sink or float in water and then tested their predictions in a tub of water!

Kindergarten has had so much fun doing projects based on Bill Martin, Jr. and John Archambault's picture book, "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom"! Today, as a STEM activity, they had to design their own coconut trees using classroom items, like stacked dice for the trunk, Popsicle sticks for the branches, and Alphabet letters! Kindergartners experimented with their tree designs and counted the amount of letters their trees could hold.