Parents Become Learning Partners at Dinkelmeyer School

John Dinkelmeyer Elementary School hosted Visitors Day on Nov. 22, with each student welcoming a parent, grandparent or another special guest to serve as their learning partner.

Teachers planned hands-on activities including engineering challenges, art projects and math games that got both children and adults involved. Second graders and their helpers used marshmallows, spaghetti, string and tape to make the tallest freestanding structures that they could, while in fourth-grade classrooms each group used gumdrops and toothpicks to build something that could support the weight of a textbook.

Kindergartners created turkey centerpieces and made Native American-inspired headdresses, first-graders used string to measure apples and third-graders made three-dimensional maps of the United States out of clay.

After hearing the book “The Summer My Father Was 10,” fifth-graders interviewed their guests about what they might have done differently during their childhoods. Parents and students faced off in sixth-grade classrooms in a math game, which tested their multiplication and division skills using playing cards.

Photos: North Bellmore School District