Whiz Kids

Narragansett Elementary School Food Drive

Students at the Narragansett Elementary School gathered food for the Johnnycake Center of Peacedale while learning about compassion.

Narragansett Elementary School students helped gather 415 food items for the Johnnycake Center with a recent food drive.  Special Education teacher Karen Festa and her student teacher Olivia Zaleski hosted the drive for the kids. Zaleski organized the drive as part of a service learning project for Salve Regina University, where she is studying. All NES students were encouraged to contribute nonperishable food items, which included cereal, pasta, and soup. Fourth grade students helped to organize the food for delivery to the Johnnycake Center as part of a three-day lesson on compassion. The lesson used both writing and math skills as the students wrote opinion pieces and created a visual graph of items collected. Since Narragansett …

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NES Learns About Recycling

Max Man teaches the other three Rs.

The Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation's superhero mascot, Max Man paid a visit to the Narragansett Elementary School to educate students about how they can help reduce waste. He spoke about the importance of the three Rs - Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle - and encouraged all the students to be responsible with their household waste and recycling. Looking for recycling events? Check out the state's website here.

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Whiz Kids

Healthy Happenings at Narragansett Elementary School

"Fuel Up to Play 60" grant helps school create greater health awareness.

Students and staff at Narragansett Elementary School enjoyed yogurt parfaits while listening to school nurse-teacher Marianne Adams read Is Your Hair Made of Donuts? by local author Joy Feldman. This was all part of Reading Week at NES, the focus of which was Healthy Eating and Physical Activity. The yogurt parfaits were funded through a grant obtained through a program called "Fuel Up to Play 60," a nationwide program founded by the National Dairy Council and the NFL, in collaboration with the USDA. The program is designed to help students, working with adults, make themselves and their schools healthier. The grant will also be used to fund taste test days and a Walk-It Club activity at the school.

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Letters To The Editor

School Fundraiser Looking For Beach Blanket Supporters

Members of the Beach Blanket Bidding committee are still collecting sponsors for this year’s event.

To the editor, In our small community, if you own or work for a small business, your neighbors are your customers, friends and co-workers. And they’re all looking for ways to stand out and promote their products and services locally. We’d like you to tell them about Beach Blanket Bidding, this unique fundraiser that benefits every child in the school system and connects the 1,500 families across our community. The BBB Committee works hard to promote the event, and sponsors it via various marketing tools, including the event website, printed materials and social platforms. By sponsoring, donating and even volunteering, local companies are promoted and their support is recognized by the families who then diligently support them. Spread the …

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SK, Gansett To Participate In Reading "Is Your Hair Made of Donuts"

Several local elementary schools will take part in a state-wide reading day.

Narragansett Elementary School and Peace Dale Elementary School students will read “Is Your Hair Made Of Donuts?” March 11 and 12 as Rhode Island elementary schools join a statewide reading of the book. The story is written by East Greenwich resident Joy Feldman, a North Kingstown-based nutritionist, mother of two and award-winning author, who designed it to inspire children to make healthy food choices. During National Nutrition Month, Feldman will celebrate the nationwide release of the children’s picture book that explains why the phrase “you are what you eat” may be truer than children think. That celebration will involve more than 75,000 students at more than 200 schools, libraries, youth programs, and health centers throughout RI …

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Family Tides

Thankful For A Full Bucket!

Thanksgiving is the perfect time to grab those beach buckets you just stashed away - unless, of course, you use an imaginary one!

As the mother of eight, if I’ve done the calculations correctly, I’ve attended more than 65 open houses to date at the beginning of each new school year. These events are certainly status quo but are also pivotal landmarks of how quickly time passes in our young children’s lives.  One moment we are “oohing” and “ahhing” at the self-portraits they’ve created in kindergarten, and in no time at all we’re listening to their high school teacher explain the importance of molecular geometry configurations predicted using VSEPR theory.  (I’ll take the kindergarten open houses any day of the week!) It’s not that I don’t enjoy open houses, but because I’ve gone to so many, sadly most are now just a blur.  (Sorry, don’t mean to sound so callous!)  …

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Blessing of the Fleet Starts Today!

Be on the lookout for runners and closed streets if you’re traveling in Narragansett tonight.

The 35th annual Blessing of the Fleet weekend starts today, with the annual 10-mile road race starting from Narragansett High School. According to the Narragansett Lions Club, about 3,000 people run the race each year. Walkers start at 5 p.m., followed by wheelchairs at 5:15 p.m. and runners at 6 p.m. The finish line is by the Towers. If you’re racing, you can check-in as early as noon. Shuttles and parking are available from Narragansett Elementary School and Narragansett Town Beach. And as a reminder, if you’re driving in Narragansett between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m., watch out for heavy pedestrian traffic and closed roads. A seafood festival accompanies the race, from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. today and from noon to 11 p.m. on Saturday. There will be …

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Whiz Kids

Third Graders Generously Give Back to Welcome House

Mallory Lee, a student teacher in Mrs. Hassell and Mrs. Festa's third grade class at Narragansett Elementary School, guided her students in a successful community project to benefit the Welcome House of South County.

This Week’s Whiz Kids:  Name:  Mrs. Hassell, Mrs. Festa and Miss Lee’s Third Grade Classes School:  Narragansett Elementary School Accomplishment: Mrs. Hassell and Mrs. Festa’s classes spearheaded a project among the entire third grade to collect paper goods and other needed items for Welcome House under the guidance of student teacher Mallory Lee. Whiz Kid’s Key to Awesomeness: Third graders are many things — curious, busy, funny, restless, interesting, smart and caring. When given an important job, however, there is another word to describe them — determined. The classroom of Mrs. Tonia Hassell and Mrs. Karen Festa recently proved that. Mallory Lee, a student teacher from Salve Regina University, created a service learning project that …

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Talk of the Town

NES Assistant Principal Monahan Never Stops Learning

Lisa Monahan had a love of learning back in her early childhood days, and to this day that passion continues to shape and guide her as an educator and as the assistant principal of the Narragansett Elementary School.

It’s certainly not uncommon to choose a career path early on in college, only to change gears along the way when realizing it wasn’t the right decision.  Narragansett Elementary School Assistant Principal Lisa Monahan chose a business and advertising major, but she learned soon enough that it wasn’t for her. Education was her real calling and she said it didn’t surprise a lot of people who knew her growing up, because she was always known for playing school with her stuffed animals, dolls and the other neighborhood kids.  Once on her new career path there was no turning back, and Monahan instantly fell in love with all things learning and teaching.  Ironically, her first teaching experience began at NES, when she was a student teacher in …

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Narragansett Kindergarten Registration Open Now!

The Narragansett School Department asks you to register your kid(s) for kindergarten on Friday, or during early May.

Kindergarten registrations for the Narragansett School District will be held Friday, April 13 from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. in the main office of Narragansett Elementary School on Mumford Road. If you can’t make the registrations on Friday, there will also be an opportunity to do so from May 7 to May 11, between 9:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. You can also register from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. on May 8. To be eligible for kindergarten, the child (or children, if you’re got an octomom situation going on) must be age 5 by September 1, 2012. Please allow yourself 30 minutes to complete the registration process. You will need to bring: Kindergarten parent information night will be held in August, on a date to be announced. There will also be a parent-child …

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