Category Archives: Student Life

Snow Ball Drew 70 Students!

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By Molly Flynn

I stepped into the fire department banquet hall. People’s dancing shoes were already tapping the ground to the beat. Streamers and snowflakes hung from the ceilings. Demogorgons from Stranger Things stood tall near backdrops. And in the very middle, a sign read: “BBES Snowball ‘26.” 

On January 15, BBES had our second annual formal dance. There was loads of dancing (including some teachers), plenty of food, and nostalgic ‘80s music from our DJ, Mr. Leprotto.

There were 70 students there—even more than last year! The eighth grade won attendance points for 100% attendance before anyone else. The eighth grade also won points for the most dancing. The best way to dance is to not care about everyone else in the room. Just be yourself, and everyone else will follow. Besides loads of dancing, there were games like mini bowling and mini cornhole.

But my overall favorite part was a spirit week leading up to the dance. Each day, the class that dressed up the most got points towards Battle of the Classes. Battle of the Classes, run by the phys ed teacher, Mr. Pulcine, is a competition in which students complete challenges and spirit weeks to earn points for their class. The eighth grade won with 60 points! Second was sixth grade with 47. Third was fifth with 41, and in fourth was 7th with 36. Also part of Spirit Week was a rock, paper, scissors challenge. All students received a Hawaiian lei; if you won, you kept it; if you lost, you gave it away. Once again, the eighth grade took the victory with about 60 leis. 

For the last day of spirit week, we had a pep rally where teachers selected kids for challenges. There was a tic-tac-toe relay, a hula hoop race, scooter racing, hungry, hungry hippos, and the most entertaining of all, musical chairs.

As you can imagine, the eighth grade won the week with a total of 60 points. If you were there, you would know how grand their celebration was. “We believe that we will win” was practically screamed. We honored Ms. Covert and Ms. Acerra. But most of all, we celebrated together. Not only were all grade levels happy with their scores, but it also brought people together. Each grade level had to join together to beat the others. That is the most important thing a school can achieve. 

Eighth Grade Wins Battle of the Classes!
Video courtesy of Ms. Acerra

Who Came First: Gregory or the Eggs? A Chicken Update.

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By Lily McClaren

Now that we have 30 new hens’ eggs incubating in the science lab (ready to hatch around June 4), we thought it would be a good time to check in on our old friends, the 18 chickens born at BBES last May.

 I interviewed Ms. Jessica Mack and her daughter Kyra Tobia to find out how our chickens are doing! 

Ms. Mack said the family kept around half of the 18 BBES chickens, and gave the rest to some of their friends. The Tobias, who have a small farm in Colts Neck, also kept the names the students gave to the chickens and roosters, including Gregory, the biggest and the leader of the flock; Peanut Butter; Jelly; Oreo; and Chi Chi, the smallest rooster in the flock. The Tobias have a coop behind their house with about 25 chickens in total. The BBES chickens are now adults, and many of them have laid eggs.

This means that some of the 30 eggs incubating in the science lab could be the offspring of our BBES chickens,  Ms. Mack said.

Ms. Mack said the adult chickens are thriving in their coop, and they get along with all the other chickens her family has, but there is one rooster that wakes her up every morning at 4:30 AM. Some of the chickens are very friendly from being around all the BBES students for their first two weeks of life, but some hate to be touched. Kyra has a harness to walk the friendly chickens!

The chickens eat pellets with calcium and nutrients. Chickens need this type of feed because it takes a lot of nutrients to create eggs. They also get a snack of dried mealworms, which they really enjoy. There’s a lot of protein in them for health. Also, they get a natural dewormer containing cayenne pepper, chili powder, sage, and regular pepper. It’s an all-natural dewormer. Chickens can’t taste anything spicy. However, the spice inside them gets rid of the parasites. 

It sounds like our feathered friends from BBES have found the perfect “forever home!” From early morning wake-up calls to walks on a harness, these chickens are living their best lives. Even though they’ve moved on from our school, they are still healthy, happy, and growing strong. We are so glad to hear that Gregory and the rest of the flock are doing well, and we’ll be on the lookout for Gregory Junior in a few weeks. 

Photos courtesy of Ms. Mack

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.

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