School Notes

Gresham School To help celebrate Read Across America and Dr. Seuss’ birthday, we had dress-up days all week. Monday we had pajama day, Tuesday was crazy sock day, Wednesday was crazy hair day, Thursday was mismatch day, and Friday was twin day. Members of our staff read to the whole elementary school on Monday. They read Dr. Seuss books and then watched the movie “Green Eggs and Ham.” They then proceeded to eat green eggs and ham and cake. Also on Thursday, the elementary kids had their drama club play. The first and second grade had “The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs.” The third-, fourth- and fifth-graders had two plays: “Scrabble” and “Let Me Play.” Next week we will have our Pennies for Patients competition. Whichever grade has the most pennies by the end of the week gets a prize. All of the money is donated to help fight cancer. Shawano Community Middle School We had our first and very successful presentation on “Middle School Minds and Bullying,” and our evening presentation is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Thursday in the LGI. It will be just over an hour. We also have a second presentation planned, specifically on electronics and how students are using them, at 1 and 6:30 p.m. March 27 in the LGI. This presentation is for parents/grandparents/guardians only. A Skylert phone message will be sent home soon. The Amazing Mini Mustache Ponies, a Destination Imagination team at Shawano Community Middle School, organized a balloon pop to raise money for the Shawano County Humane Society. Eighth-grade students at SCMS bought balloons to pop; inside the balloon they found a prize. Several businesses in Shawano, including Oakhaven, Perkins, Domino’s, Pizza Hut, Body Essentials, Lake Shore Lanes, El Tequila, Qualheim’s, Northeast Wisconsin Technical College and Book World, donated money and prizes for this event. The team raised $170 to buy cat food. Students who sold items for the Student Council fundraiser earned an afternoon of fun on Feb. 28. Hansen’s fundraising provided popcorn and drinks, along with a number of bouncy houses for students to enjoy. A good time was had by all! Hillcrest Primary School Did you know that the plates on the back of a stegosaurus act like an internal air conditioner? Did you know that flying dinosaurs are actually called pterosaurs? Did you know that the diplodocus dinosaur stood on its back legs to feed on high trees? Or that deinonychus dinosaurs hunted in packs? Well, the students in Megan Beauprey’s first-grade class at Hillcrest Primary know these things. Thanks to a special volunteer, these first-graders learned a lot about dinosaurs. On Friday, Mark Verkuilen, of 1st Class Ink and Verkuilen Chiropractic, visited these first-grade students to help them explore the world of dinosaurs for their new science unit. This week was KAT week at Hillcrest School. Our Knowledge-a-Thon (KAT) quiz day was March 4. We would like to thank all of the parents and community members who came to help quiz our students. We would also like to thank teachers Dan Mead, Melanie Miller, Karen Preston, Alexander LeRoy and all of their fifth-grade students for coming to quiz. We couldn’t have done it without your help. Check back to find out how many questions that Hillcrest students answered correctly. Cindy Ferch’s class celebrated Dr. Seuss this week. We enjoyed lots of his great books. We had some guest readers, and we even made green eggs and ham. We all tried the eggs, and most of the students liked them. We are learning about our community and the difference between things we want and things we need. Beth Mueller’s students have been busy discovering the world around us. We continue to explore our environment, making new discoveries and connections every day. We are always anxious to share our learning with others. Jamie Malueg’s students continue to take on new reading challenges. We enjoy spending time with our first-grade buddies and really enjoy partner reading. Bonnie Hilgenberg’s class is taking care of the Earth. Our class has been busy learning what we can do to make the Earth a safe and healthy place to live. We have a responsibility to care for the Earth. Our class will put on a play at Birch Hill Nursing Home at the end of March. We can make a difference! Bonduel Elementary School Recently, the 4-K classes at BES celebrated our 100th day of school! We ate a special 100th day of school snack. We also enjoyed special activities such as making glasses, counting to 100, finding 100 numbers hidden around the room, making a book about what we would buy if we had $100 and bringing in collections of 100 items from home. We are very excited to be 100 days smarter. Bonduel Elementary first- through fifth-graders participated in the Jump Rope For Heart program the week of Feb. 10 in their gym classes. We used long jump ropes one day and short jump ropes the next day. The younger students learned how to twirl the long rope, and a lot of the older students learned how to get into the middle while the rope was twirling. They all discovered that jumping rope is great exercise. The Jump Rope For Heart program is celebrating its 35th anniversary this year. Because of this, extra incentives were added for the students. We had 46 students collect donations for the American Heart Association, which was double the number that took part in this community service project in 2013. The students collected $2,254, an increase of more than $1,100 from 2013. The top fundraisers were Mason Zuleger and Alex Benish. Thank you to all the students who went out and collected donations for the American Heart Association to benefit their research and educational programs. Thank you to everyone who supported all of the students who collected donations for the American Heart Association.