by Cori Hilsgen
news@thenewsleaders.com
This year’s All Saints Academy second-grade and sixth-grade students were able to be part of a Leap Day project that began at least four Leap Days ago.
During the first year the Leap Day project began, second-grade teacher Betty Pundsack said students were learning about writing a friendly letter. She thought it might be fun for the students to write themselves a letter and then changed it to having students write themselves a letter four years in the future.
In their letters they can make predictions about themselves, their families and our world, or imagine what their interests would be and more. They could also write about what they were doing that particular day and include a few current events.
When the students are in sixth grade, Pundsack returns the letters to them and has the present second-grade students write themselves a letter.
Besides having the students open and write letters, Pundsack discusses with the students the novelty of the extra Leap Day, gives a basic explanation of why we have Leap Day and they play the game Leap Frog.
“If a student has moved or changed schools, I do everything I can to forward the letters to them,” Pundsack said.
She said the students often smile and gasp about what they wrote in their letters.
ASA sixth-grade students received their Leap Day letters, which they wrote in second grade, on Feb. 29.
Pundsack said the students had reminded her in advance about the day and were very excited as they read their letters to themselves.
“Oh my gosh, I wrote so small,” Reese Moneypenny said.
“I can’t believe I wrote so much,” Claire SiaSu said.
“You guys, we didn’t even have school on Leap Day that year,” Sam Harren said, because the day was canceled due to snow.
“Wow, we were (named) St. Joe Lab (School) four years ago,” Kenzie Finken said.
“Hey, we had a huge snow hill that year,” Alaina Botz said.
“The letters included lots of references to their families, pets, the Iowa Basic Skills test they had just taken, that our president was Barack Obama, lots of names of friends and their favorite classes,” Pundsack said. “They giggled, shared and in general were so happy to catch a glimpse of themselves four years ago.”
She said changes included the school is now named All Saints Academy instead of St. Joseph Lab School, that the students now take the Northwest Evaluation Association Measures of Academic Progress test instead of the Iowa Basic Skills tests, that they did have school on Leap Day this year and that there was less snow this year.
ASA sixth-grade students in Betty Pundsack’s classroom celebrated Leap Day Feb. 29 by opening letters they wrote to themselves four years ago, when they were in second grade. Pictured with their letters are the following: (front row, left to right) Reese Moneypenny, Jaedyn Nydeen, Alaina Botz, Tommy Smith and Brennan Thielen; (back row) Colin Klein, Max Meyer, Kenzie Finken, Claire SiaSu, Sam Harren, John Hawkins and Grant Wensmann.
