Old Mill Elementary School

📚✨ BCPS Library Shout-Out! ✨📚
A huge thank-you to the BCPS Library / Mt. Washington Public Library for joining our kindergarten classes for the opening event of their upcoming Project-Based Learning (PBL) unit! Your visit helped launch our learning in such a meaningful way by introducing students to the power of stories, empathy, and curiosity. Our kindergarteners were so engaged as they explored new vocabulary, shared their thinking, and began wondering how storytellers can use empathy to better understand misunderstood characters. We are so grateful for your partnership and for helping set the stage for an exciting and thoughtful PBL journey! 💛📖

🎨 ATTENTION OLD MILL ARTISTS! 📚 We are thrilled to announce our FIRST EVER Bookmark Design Competition! We want to see your creativity shine as you show us: "What does reading mean to me?" The Rules: Student-Powered Only: We want to see your unique art! Please, no help from parents or adults on the drawing. Due Date: Turn in your masterpiece during the week of January 26–30. The Grand Prize: The winner will receive a $50 Book Fair certificate! Plus, your winning design will be professionally reproduced and handed out to every single student in the library! 🏆 Winners will be announced in February. We can’t wait to see what reading looks like through your eyes!

Congratulations to our archery team for walking away with 4th place at their first tournament! Great job, Koalas!

🎯 Shout Out to Our OMES Archery Team! 🎯 Good luck to our amazing OMES Archery team as they compete in their first tournament of the season today! We are so proud of your hard work, focus, and dedication. Aim high and have a great time representing OMES! 🏹💙

🪿💛 Goldie Goose Winner! 💛🪿 Congratulations to Mrs. Bray’s class for earning Goldie Goose with the highest attendance last month! Our Koalas Celebrate Success when students show up every day ready to learn! Who will have Goldie next month?! 👀✨

Have a great weekend, OMES Families!

https://youtube.com/shorts/gkyxhiTNN3M?si=X0-idbgBv55PWn8L

Check out this month's newsletter for all the upcoming information!

https://bcps-newsletter.edurooms.com/engage/old-mill-elementary/newsletters/omes-january-2026

This weeks student spotlight goes outs to Avery. She came back to school ready to work and shows what it means to be a mastery learner every day. She works hard, stays positive, and never gives up when learning gets challenging. Her determination and smile make our school a better place! 🌟

✔️🐨 Introducing our Koalas of the Month for Accountability! 🐨✔️ These Koalas take ownership of their choices, hold themselves to high expectations, and respectfully encourage others to do the right thing too. Their leadership and honesty help make our school a stronger, more responsible community! 💙💛

✔️🐨 Introducing our Koalas of the Month for Accountability! 🐨✔️ These Koalas take ownership of their choices, hold themselves to high expectations, and respectfully encourage others to do the right thing too. Their leadership and honesty help make our school a stronger, more responsible community! 💙💛

💛 The best sound is back—student voices filling our halls! Today was our first day back, and our hearts are full. We loved welcoming our students back to Old Mill and jumping right back into learning together. Here’s to a great rest of the year! 🐨✨

Shout-out to Ms. Clements for her incredible dedication and heart for students! She is one of the hardest workers around and consistently puts students first in everything she does. Ms. Clements is a true team player who brings innovation into her practice to ensure all learners succeed. We are so grateful for the care, creativity, and commitment she brings to our school every day! 💙

Today our staff hit the ground running as we prepared to welcome our students back! 🎉 We celebrated successes, dug into data to identify next steps, and grounded our work in purpose with a mission-focused message from our superintendent, Dr. Bacon. The day continued with district leadership and teacher leaders sharing new and innovative instructional tools designed to help us plan more intentionally and meet the needs of every learner. It was a powerful, forward-thinking day and now we’re just ready to hear the halls filled with laughter and learning again tomorrow! 💛📚

💙 Welcome Back, Old Mill Family! 💙 We hope everyone had a restful winter break filled with warmth, laughter, and special moments. Our halls have felt a little quieter without our students and we have missed them so much! We are excited to open our doors, reconnect, and jump back into learning together tomorrow! See everyone bright and early!

✨ New Year’s Reflection | Old Mill Family ✨ As we welcome a new year, we’re taking a moment to reflect on the moments that mattered most. 💙 📸 We’d love to see YOUR reflection: Drop a picture from the past year that made you smile, feel proud, or reminded you why you love being part of the Old Mill community. It could be: • A favorite school moment • A family memory • A moment of growth or celebration • Something that brought joy Thank you for being part of our story. We can’t wait to see what this new year brings. 🌟🐨

🎄✨ Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays from the Old Mill Elementary family! Wishing you joy, peace, and special moments with those you love.

❄️✨ Snow Globe Stories Go Public ✨❄️ Our first graders took on a magical challenge with this driving question: How can we, as young authors, create a magical story that captures and shares the sensory wonders of a winter morning with our community? Through stories, songs, and hands-on sensory stations, students learned to use feeling and sensory words tied to all five senses. They designed a snow globe and wrote a creative narrative that brought their characters and settings to life. 🌟 Even better, these stories are now on display at the Mount Washington Library! This project helped our students grow as Mastery Learners and Self-Directed Navigators and proud young authors! 📚💙

🎄💫 From our Old Mill family to yours, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! We are so grateful for our incredible students, families, staff, and community partners. Your support makes Old Mill a place where kids thrive and joy is felt every day. Wishing you peace, rest, and special moments this holiday season. See you in the new year! 💙 https://youtube.com/shorts/3gv0Mrb9D8A?feature=shared

This week has been a whirlwind of holiday celebrations! Our staff has been absolutely showered with love...Christmas gifts from our principals and leadership team, a generous popcorn and hot chocolate donation from Southeast Christian, ServPro, our social committee and our PTO going above and beyond with lunch, gifts, and raffles. We’ve also had so much fun with staff competitions, including gingerbread decorating, an ugly sweater contest, and team Christmas Clash challenges that brought out lots of laughs and friendly competition. And we’re not done yet… tomorrow we go out with a bang with our annual Reindeer Games! 🎄✨

✨⚖️ Learning Comes Alive in 5th Grade! ⚖️✨ Our 5th graders recently took part in a Hogwarts-themed courtroom simulation based on Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone! Students stepped into roles as judges, lawyers, witnesses, jurors—and even Harry himself to answer the big question: 🧙‍♂️ Was Harry Potter justified in going after the Sorcerer’s Stone? Using evidence from the text, students practiced critical thinking, speaking and listening skills, teamwork, and evidence-based reasoning as they presented arguments, questioned witnesses, and defended their claims. This engaging activity helped students deepen their understanding of character motivation, decision-making, and how to support opinions with proof from a text—all while having a little magical fun! We are so proud of our students for their creativity, collaboration, and thoughtful discussions during this unforgettable learning experience! 💫📚