The most anticipated moment of the week for kindergartners and fifth graders at Wantagh Elementary School is the time they get to spend together. Students in Patricia Magoloff’s class are regularly visited by their older peers from Traci Weiss’s class.

With the holidays approaching, the buddies enjoyed reading gingerbread-themed books together. Then, they did educational gingerbread fun packets together. They colored a gingerbread man by sight word, connected the dots alphabetically to form a gingerbread man and did a holiday word search. To help with math, students rolled dice and figured out the sum to see which number to color on a candy house. 

Ms. Magoloff and Ms. Weiss said that the kindergarten and fifth grade buddies regularly read together, then do a hands-on follow-up activity.