Category Archives: Student Life

Students’ Lemonade Stand Prompts a Sweet Gift

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By Molly Flynn

It was a sweltering August day, with temperatures reaching about 90 degrees, and tourists were flooding the streets. Julia Bianchi, Lillian McClaren, and I were bored out of our minds. Julia had the great idea of setting up a lemonade stand to make some extra cash. 

We started to prepare, taking lemons, sugar, and a lemon-printed tablecloth from Lily’s house for our stand on my front lawn. We took a massive sheet of paper from Lily’s basement and wrote “LEMONADE $1” in bright green. No one could read the writing in the blinding sunlight.

Julia then (again) had the great idea that since we are members of the National Junior Honor Society, we should donate the money for service hours. Lily and I agreed on one condition: we got to pick where the money went.

After a couple of minutes of researching random charities near us on Lily’s phone, we decided on Make-A-Wish. A castle only half an hour away would be perfect.

We added “All proceeds go to Make-A-Wish Foundation” to our sign. Business started booming.

Our biggest donor was a Bradley local, Shannon Symons, who donated $100!

“I donated because, as a cancer survivor myself, I knew that what these kids were raising money for is important,” she said.

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Pirates, Paint, & Parties: a Year in Art Club

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By Delta Sorensen

This year, Art Club met every Wednesday after school in Mrs. DiZefalo’s classroom. There were 19 members in the third and fourth grades.

“Our first several projects were pirate-themed,” said Mrs. DiZefalo. “Students made wanted posters and gave themselves pirate nicknames. We also made watercolor gems and pirate ships.”

As a member of the Art Club, the thing I like most is that we made things out of clay and glazed our projects. We also made clay bowls for Mother’s Day. We also had parties.

I encourage all third and fourth-graders to join if they are able to because it is fun and educational.

Inside our Computer Club

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By Milo Butler

Computer Club is a fascinating and important part of the Bradley Beach Elementary School. The club accepts students in grades four through eight. This year, we were able to get 13 cool coders into Computer Club. We meet every other Wednesday, at 8:00 am, although we are not going to meet again until the beginning of the 2025-26 school year. This year, Computer Club ended early because Mrs. Fox was out on maternity leave, spending time with her baby.

Here is what we do in Computer Club. We are coding games to play in Computer Club. Coding is when you create a program on a computer that runs through a set of instructions to make what the computer does.

We also had the Bebras Challenge on November 13 where we were working very hard. The Bebras Challenge is an international computer science competition.

Mrs. Fox has been running Computer Club since 2018. Mrs. Fox has always had a love for computers and coding. She loves the games kids create in Computer Club because they are really creative. In Computer Club’s future, she is planning to participate in the Bebras Challenge every year. Mrs. Fox is a wonderful teacher who is working hard to do new things on computers each and every day. To conclude, Computer Club is a very fun and important club in the Bradley Beach Elementary School, and you should consider joining it to make an even better future.

Middle School Glows at Semi-Formal

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By Nora Weber

Last month, we had our first-ever semi-formal middle school dance at the Bradley Beach Fire Department Banquet Hall. The event was glow-themed, featuring neon lights, balloons, hanging paper stars, and plenty of glowing gadgets for students to wear.

The Student Council – led by Ms Acerra and Mrs. Covert – provided an assortment of delicious food, including chicken fingers, pasta, tacos, and taquitos dorados de pollo, as well as desserts like cupcakes and churros.

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In Tough Political Times, Love Comes First: Opinion Piece

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By Molly Flynn

“In our nation, we owe loyalty not to a president, or a party, but to the Constitution of the United States.” – Kamala Harris’s Concession Speech, November 6. 2024.

The election this year was controversial, to say the least. However, this doesn’t mean we need to fight at the dinner table over our opposing points of view. Just because one party won and the other lost, doesn’t mean we need to fight people or leave the country. 

Many of us just celebrated Thanksgiving. Christmas is coming up. I personally have family members with a range of political views, ranging from extremely conservative to very liberal, yet, at Thanksgiving, we talked about our interests, my dancing, my cousin’s golfing, and not about our political views. Want to know why? Because we love each other regardless of our political ideologies. That’s what you should care about. Now, I have some tips on what to do if the dinner table gets political. One thing I like to do is to tell a joke. This will hopefully distract people and start a new conversation. For example “Why couldn’t the sailor learn the alphabet? Because he got lost at ‘C’” A real knee-slapper. You could also tell your family about something new or exciting that happened to you. Maybe you just saw Wicked, you could talk about that. Hopefully, this guides the conversation into something less controversial. 

Now, I have heard of a lot of people saying that they’re going to leave the country. However, that is a terrible and immature response to the results. Instead of only focusing on the parties of America, we should focus on keeping America as the great country it is. Political parties are one singular part of America. There is so much more. And even if you oppose the current administration, there’s always another election in 2028. 

I will leave you with this fact: There is a 1 in 400,000,000,000,000 chance that you were even born on this planet. We should be grateful for even being here, and even more grateful that the number one thing we’re worrying about is politics. Stop worrying, and think about what you do have, not what you don’t have.

As you can clearly see, we shouldn’t let our political parties interfere with our day-to-day choices, especially how we view our family members. When you’re at the dinner table with your family, don’t forget that you love them for who they are.

Clubs Team up at Green Fair

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By Nora Weber

The Bradley Beach Green Fair is an annual event held in Riley Park to honor Earth Day, set up by the Bradley Beach tourism director, Amy Hall. This year, there were about 30-35 community groups and businesses at the green fair on April 21, and BBES was one of them.

At our table, we sold pottery vases that we made at Lovelight Handmade planted with marigolds. We also sold vegetable seedlings that we grew from seed in Mr. Sauer’s classroom. Environmental Club members presented information about the new aquaponics system BBES purchased this school year with the help of a grant from the state. The students from the Environmental and Garden Clubs worked in shifts to sell the pottery and plants. Mrs. Sauer, Mr. Cosgrove, and Mrs. Dizefalo also helped us out with our sales. Mrs. Dizefalo stopped by to set up and display the second graders’ recycled art project made with the help of green artist Lisa Bagwell. Even our mascot Bradley the Seagull was there to show his school spirit for Earth Day.

Since the pottery was made for free at Lovelight by the student club members, and they were our biggest hit, we raised $411, a good amount of money for the Garden and Environmental Clubs.

Two years ago, we also sold plants at the green fair supervised by the Environmental and Garden Club teacher, Mrs.Bialek. That year, we prepared by getting seedlings for popular vegetables and plants like tomatoes, beans, mint, and flowers. Kids were going around asking people if they wanted to buy plants, and it was a fun time. We sold almost all the plants we had.

Hopefully, in the future, we can continue this Earth Day tradition.

A New Spin for Bradley Bleach Laundromat 

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by Max Gast and the staff of The Tides

You are a little kid waiting for your parents to do their laundry, but all you can do is sit on a bench off to the side thinking about what you’re going to do when you get home. Watching clothes revolving in the large, stainless steel machines, you notice something new in the corner: a colorful rug, a child-sized table, and a bookcase loaded with brand-new books! 

The Laundromat Library at Bradley Bleach is the first such library in Monmouth County at 615 Park Place Avenue. Installed in October with a $5,000 grant obtained by the Bridge of Books Foundation, the Laundromat Library allows books to be taken home by kids. And you don’t need an I.D. or a library card.

“The idea is to expose children to literacy at an early age,” said Ursula Ayers, a former math teacher who owns the laundromat with her husband, Victor Ayers. “Children take books home to keep. We want children to have books to call their own,” 

The books range from early childhood to middle-grade reading levels, and there are even some for adults. This library was set up with help from the nonprofit Bridge of Books Foundation, which obtained a $5,000 grant from The Burlington Foundation for equipment and an ongoing supply of books. 

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