Waverly Students Celebrate the Alphabet with Runway Event
The letters of the alphabet came to life on Friday morning, as Waverly kindergartners—and their teachers—celebrated a year’s worth of learning with color and joy at the annual Alphabet Runway.
Students from each of the Waverly School’s kindergarten classes were assigned a letter of the alphabet, encouraged to dress up as a representation of that letter and take center-stage in their costumes in front of their classmates, teachers and aides. Kindergarten teacher Nicole Ullrich said she first began holding the Alphabet Runway walk as an end-of-year celebration for her class nine years ago, but the event has since grown into a popular school-wide undertaking.
"This is really fun celebration of their achievement of learning all of the letters of the alphabet," said Ullrich. "It's such an exciting day, and as you can see, all of their smiles are shining."
Ullrich explained that Friday’s event was the culmination of a half-year effort that saw Waverly students focus on learning one letter per week until they had gained a basic comprehension of the entire alphabet.
“It’s 26 weeks of letters of the week, so they have been going through every letter, learning the sounds, learning what it represents, learning how we can make words and read and write,” said Ullrich. “This is just a day to celebrate that they’ve finally achieved this huge milestone in their kindergarten year.”
The kindergartners’ language skills weren’t the only attributes being celebrated, however, as the day also gave students an outlet to express themselves creatively in front of their peers. Costumes ranged from witches and Wonder Woman (W) to princesses, pizzas and playing cards (P).
“Whatever level they want to do is totally fine and we love it in every way,” said Ullrich. “And some of them go above and beyond and it just shows that beautiful home-to-school connection and we couldn’t ask for more.”