Stewart students play word games Tuesday

More than 200 people turned out for Stewart Elementary School?s Reading Night Tuesday. The school had many stations throughout the building at which parents played reading-oriented games and activities with their children. One room had a karaoke machine in it. Kids sang into microphones while they watched the words to the song flash on the projector in front of them. One of the songs the kids sang was ?The Wheels on the Bus,? and also various lyrics to that song that employed the same melody.

In one classroom, parents and students looked through cereal boxes as part of a word search. In some cases, the students were tasked with finding a specific color and other times their task was to find a word that was used as a verb or other part of speech.

First-grader Amber Hesseltine was in the library with her grandmother Carol Callahan reading the book ?Little Bear.? Callahan said she reads to Hesseltine, and that recently Hesseltine has been reading to her. One of Hesseltine?s assignments is to read to an adult for 15 minutes. She said some of her favorite books are part of the ?Berenstain Bears? series. She also likes books by Dr. Seuss.

One of the rooms was dedicated to playing a word game called ?Boggle.? In this game, the kids are presented with a grid of 16 letters. The children then have to create words using only those letters listed on the sheet.

Pat Pacha and his daughters Katelyn and Kelsey had fun playing Boggle. Katelyn, a fourth-grader, found a few dozen words on the sheet such as ?Monday? and ?wonderful.? Pat said that that Katelyn found more words than he did.

Pat said Tuesday wasn?t the first time he had been to a family night at Stewart. He went to the Math Night a few months ago that the school hosted.

?This gives you an opportunity to meet the teachers and talk to them,? he said.

Kelsey, a second-grader, said she sometimes plays these sorts of word games with kindergarteners. Katelyn said that she enjoyed going to school, while Kelsey said she enjoyed going to school only ?sometimes.?

?It?s kind of boring,? Kelsey said.

When asked if she wanted more homework in order to stay busy, Kelsey said that was not the problem.

There was nothing boring about the activities at Stewart Tuesday night. A couple of rooms included a Nintento Wii videogame console. The students played a dance game that was designed for kids. They would pick a song such as ?La Macarena? or ?Kung Fu Fighting? and then they would see characters on the screen dance to that song.

The students held one of the ?wands? while they danced, which measured their movements. At the end of the dance, the screen showed which student most closely matched the movements of the characters.

Pam Vongpanya was there with her children, Avery, 3, and Cameron, in first-grade. Avery attends Stewart West Preschool and spent a great deal of time Tuesday in the two makeshift dance halls. After watching her son ?cut a rug? with the other students, Vongpanya said she might have to get the dance game.

Vongpanya said she attends most of the family night events at Stewart and that she has gotten to know most of the teachers by attending the programs.

?I love that I can see what Cameron does during the day,? she said. ?Today was the first time I had ever seen the computer lab. I?m impressed because it is a nice computer lab.?