Happy Birthday Dr. King!

For the last several years, Ms. Lustberg’s fourth grade class has created an interactive assembly honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  At this year’s assembly, her class read parts of his iconic I Had a Dream speech to the gathered lower school students and spoke eloquently about Dr. King’s accomplishments and his importance to the history of this country.

Jingle Bells

The three-year-olds in C-1 spread joy and cheer through Chilton House as they went caroling through the building carrying homemade jingle bells.  Happy holidays!!

Feliz Navidad from the Fourth Grade!

Many Hands Make Light Work

Mrs. Bhagia's fourth grade and Mrs. Ebeling's first grade buddy classes work together to create a "handmade" friendship wreath to decorate Little School's lobby.

They experienced the value of cooperation and the joy of giving.

EMS Students Participate in MOOC Event on Minecraft in Education

Recently some of our fourth, fifth and sixth graders had the opportunity to teach teachers from around the world!

The Elisabeth Morrow School was invited to host the kick off event for the Games MOOC

(Massively Open Online Course) weekend focused on using Minecraft in education. We hosted an open house on Morrowcraft , our 24/7 Minecraft server, to showcase student work. Students were in the game to welcome visiting teachers and answer their questions. They were able to participate either from home or school. Ms. Malmstrom and Ms Rolle coordinated the activities at school and Ms. Malmstrom helped facilitate the event both on and off-line.

The logistics of running a MOOC event in real time to such large audiences around the world is quite amazing. Facilitators of the Games MOOC hosted commentary of our live event using a Google Hangout that was simultaneously streamed via YouTube. Participants were able to ask questions in the YouTube chat and the facilitators relayed them back to us in the Google Hangout. This event was also discussed on Twitter using #gamemooc. Two of our sixth graders were also tweeting on behalf of the EMS students. Our guest moderator was Dr. Bronwyn Stuckey from Sydney, Australia.

Our students were so impressive. Several shared how Mrs. Bliesener’s class is using Minecraft this year in social studies. Some students gave tours of all the wonderful things they have built. Others showed how they create circuits with red stone and so much more. Mrs. Goldman and Mr. Baly also contributed their perspective as both educators and parents.

We are Bucket Fillers!

We are Bucket Fillers! The kindergarteners in C2 have created a bucket-filling classroom. First, we read the book

Have You Filled a Bucket Today? A Guide to Daily Happiness for Kids,  by Carol McCloud. Then we discussed and listed the many ways that we can fill each others buckets every day.  The "buckets" represent our state of mind and well being, and the language of bucket filling has become synonymous with kindness and the 4 C’s at EMS.

The children are motivated and excited about being bucket fillers by helping one another, working together, demonstrating kindness and showing appreciation.  They are learning that when they help to fill other peoples buckets, they are actually filling their own buckets as well.

Getting Ready for the Little School Holiday Program

Recently, the fourth grade recorder ensemble practiced for the Little School Holiday Program.  They will be joining the fourth grade band, cellists, and violinists in performing "Ode to Joy" on Friday, December 20.  Performing in an ensemble teaches students to work together, listen to each other and follow a conductor.  It also strengthens individual musicianship, as each student learns that their part is important, and makes the whole group's performance successful.

Getting Ready for Regrouping!

In preparation for regrouping double digit numbers the second graders counted up large collections of items found in the classroom. In doing so, they discovered ways to do this most efficiently was to separate the items into larger and easier to count groups. They learned that counting by tens was easiest and then adding the ones left over for an accurate total.

Happy Thanksgiving - In Spanish

Mrs. Barile's second grade class learned to say happy Thanksgiving in Spanish and practiced saying thank you for the people and things they love the most!

EMS Students Excel in Math League Competition!

By Carol Toth, Math Teacher 

On Wednesday, November 13, 24 elementary students (two teams of four students each in third, fourth and fifth grades) traveled to Rutgers Preparatory School to participate in the Math League elementary school contest. This is the third year that our students have participated. Nine schools were at the contest with approximately 125 students. The contest consisted of many parts including a team part, a number sense round and some sections where a calculator could be used. The students from Elisabeth Morrow did exceptionally well. Our third grade teams came in first and sixth place. Our fourth grade teams came in second and fourth and our two fifth grade teams garnered both first and second place in their respective grades. Individually, our students excelled as well. In third grade: Harrison White came in second, Yoel Zachariah came in fifth and Andrew Hyde came in 10th. In fourth grade we had six students in the top ten: second place went to Henry Choi, fifth to Ian Maloney, sixth to
James Grant, seventh to Andrew Hyde, ninth to Rohan Buluswar, and 10th to Thomas Grant.  Our fifth graders made a clean sweep. Shelby Kim came in first, Peter Staphos second, Aidan Kim third, Garo Amerkanian fourth, John Mauro fifth, and Ronit Malde seventh. Congratulations to our outstanding competitors.

Not to be outdone, on Thursday, November 14, 21 of our middle school students traveled to Far Hills Country Day School to participate in our first ever middle school competition with the Math League. In this competition, we fared extremely well also. Five schools with 26 teams and approximately 100 students were there. Our teams took second, third and fifth place. Our students scored well individually as well. In sixth grade: Sangmin Lee was 10th, Cole Knie was seventh, Cameron Woo was fourth, Oren Berkowitz second and Reha Mathur was the first place winner. In seventh grade: James Wedgbury placed seventh, Allison DeRose placed fifth and Tanvi Jonnalagadda placed third.  Austin Kwak was the second place finisher and Shant Amerkanian was the first place winner. In eighth grade,Kira Trout placed 10th, Chrissie Anagnos fourth, and Emily Yu place third. The contest also had a countdown round pitting students against one another in 45-second bouts. Only the top students from all the schools were invited to participate. As the anticipation mounted to see which students would be chosen, once again Elisabeth Morrow outshone all others. Of the 12 students chosen to be in the countdown round, we had seven: Austin Kwak, Tanvi Jonnalgadda, Reha Mathur, Chrissie Anagnos, Allison DeRose, Shant Amerkanian, and Emily Yu. It was very stressful being under the time constraints but we made it to the semi finals, being beaten at the last moment by two students from Warren Township Middle School Schools. Kudos to all the students who participated.