Tuesday Newsday

Thank you for your support in making the SD74 Summer Adventures program such a success! Throughout the summer, students and staff engaged in a wide variety of fun, enriching lessons and activities, creating a memorable season of learning and adventure.

As we head into the final weeks of summer break, I hope you have opportunities to relax, recharge, and enjoy time with family and friends.

We are looking forward to an exciting 2026–2027 school year at Lincolnwood SD74! And if SD74 is not your home district, we wish you a wonderful and successful school year ahead.

Sincerely,

Dominick Lupo

SD74 Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction

Courses are listed alphabetically.

Active Fun Zone! and All-Star Games

We have had such a fun and active summer together! Over the last couple of weeks, we have learned the basics of soccer, volleyball, baseball, and frisbee while practicing teamwork and good sportsmanship. We also made plenty of time for favorites like dodgeball, a variety of tag games, Gaga Ball, kickball, and frisbee baseball. I am so grateful I had the opportunity to be part of so many smiles, laughs, and great memories with your amazing kiddos. Wishing everyone a wonderful rest of the summer!

Beginner Readers Reading & Writing – Fun & Games!

Students worked on developing important spelling, reading, comprehension, vocabulary, and writing skills using differentiated hands-on activities. Reading games and independent reading books reinforced essential skills.

Board Game Buddies

We continued to learn and play over 20 games, then sorted them into categories before creating our very own games! The games we learned include the following by category: Race & Bump (Sorry), Two-Player Grid Strategy (Chess, Checkers, Othello), Deduction (Battleship, Clue), Sowing also known as Count & Capture (Mancala, Qawale), Tile Laying (Blokus, Qwirkle, Rummikub), Advanced Versions of Tic-Tac-Toe (Connect Four, Quarto, Achi, Otrio), Matching (Memory), Educational (The World Game), Cooperative (Forbidden Island), Card Shedding (Uno, Spoons), and Dice (Left-Right-Center). I hope your children continue to enjoy some of these games at home with you, including games they may have made!

Casting Call – Acting/Drama/Improv

These student performers had loads of fun learning about puppetry while making their own hand puppets, which they used to put on shows for their peers. In addition to monologue and duologue performances, they used their silent acting skills and new knowledge of mime to act out self-made scenes for the class audience. These expressive entertainers continued to improve with each performance, and the emerging drama talent on display was abundant all summer long.

Choose-Your-Own-Adventures Fun Book Club!

Students worked on differentiated hands-on spelling and reading comprehension skills activities. Students participated in a whole-class read-aloud of a humorous and relatable novel to reinforce important listening skills, reading comprehension, and vocabulary development. They explored new and old favorite books, discussing story events with classmates, and creating choice writing activities. We concluded class this week with a book talk sharing our favorite book synopsis, rating, and recommendations.

English Learner (EL) Classes

What an amazing summer it has been! We were able to finish our chapter books and create personal dictionaries complete with definitions, sentences, and pictures. The students are all so excited to use these and add to them in the future! This will be a great resource in the years to come. This week we had a blast playing games that emphasize teamwork, communication, and the vocabulary we have covered in class. Thank you for making Summer Adventures a success!

Gym Jam (Grades 4-6)

As Summer Adventurers comes to an end, we’ve had an amazing time staying active and making memories together! Throughout the summer, we played so many fun games, with favorites including Gaga Ball, Bean Bag Slide, Kickball, and many more. It has been wonderful to see everyone try new activities, build friendships, and have fun while staying active. Thank you for an incredible summer!

Just Dance!

Warm-up, stretch, dance, repeat! Just Dance students have been working hard to memorize and dance to the beat. As the class wrapped up, students made flyers and passed them out to the rest of the Summer Adventures classes to publicize their final dance performance.

Legendary Creatures

These past few weeks, we continued our journey into the fantastic world of legendary creatures by learning and reading both nonfiction books and storybooks about trolls, elves, gnomes, mermaids, dragons, fairies, and unicorns. We also read about creatures from Greek mythology, including Cyclops, Hydra, Typhus, Centaurus, Chimera, and Pegasus! We made crafts of many of these out of various materials and also colored our collector cards for each creature. Please look for your child’s small Legendary Creature folder with these cards in addition to their projects. They can tell you about each one! We also spent some time this week imagining and creating our very own legendary creatures after reviewing the special attributes of those that we learned about this summer. Students had some very creative ideas, so keep an eye out for those projects also!

Math Explorers

Our Math Explorers took off on a numerical journey through space and the rainforest! Our final week’s focus was on building fact fluency, telling time, and counting coins. Through daily practice and themed challenges, students strengthened their math muscles while having a blast.

Math Games & Crafts

Over the last few weeks, we've been focusing on addition and subtraction by playing the BUMP game, creating fun crafts, and reading interactive math stories. Students have also been learning about money by identifying coins and practicing their values through hands-on activities.

Math Marvels

Students in Math Marvels worked hard this week on mastering addition facts, telling time to the hour and half-hour, and identifying coins. Themed math centers tied into our space and bug adventures, making math both meaningful and memorable. They’re becoming math masters right before our eyes!

Movie-Making Magic – Video Production & Post Production

The apprentice filmmakers used their newfound technical knowledge to make short films and commercials promoting the Summer Adventures program. The students had a lot of fun while doing an amazing job collaborating together in creative partnership to learn more about the movie-making process.

Mystery Detectives

We are heading toward becoming official detectives! In our last few weeks, we have been building up our detective skills by learning about ink chromatography, lie detectors, and handwriting analysis. Students continued to use their critical skills by completing digital escape rooms that involve solving riddles and puzzles. This week, we worked toward solving a big mystery. I am so proud of what our detectives have completed this summer!

Passport to Art

It’s been a whirlwind summer! After spending time in Japan, Italy, Greece, and Egypt during the first two weeks, our world travelers visited Mexico and Hawaii, followed by numerous countries in South America, including Brazil, Argentina, Peru, and Chile. Next, we flew across the Atlantic to Kenya and hopscotched to Iraq, India, and France. Finally, we rounded things out with a return to Asia to learn about South Korea, Vietnam, and the Philippines!

Art projects these last three weeks have included a Mexican Sombrero painting; a Hawaiian sunset colored-pencil drawing with a Hula dancer craft; a remake of the Blue Morpho butterfly of the Amazon Rain Forest with various craft materials; the depiction of an elephant at home in the savannas of Africa using construction paper and tinfoil; a drawing and cutout of a Sumerian figure with decorative craft materials; a step-by-step colored-pencil drawing of a peacock, the national bird of India; copies of Monet paintings in oil pastel for France and landscape drawings of South Korea, Vietnam, and the Philippines in an impressionistic style in blended oil pastel. We also took time to read and learn about art and artists along the way. Along with your child’s projects, please look for their passport with stamps from all these countries!