Toys for Tots

Sioux Trail was not included in the district release of information about holiday activities at schools, but our students and families continue to make a difference in the lives of others. When we started the planning process we worked hard to keep this collection low key because this can be a tough time of the year and we didn't want to add additional pressure. Our experience with the Sally Foster fundraiser should have taught me a better lesson. I had heard stories from other schools in ISD 191 about declining totals from fundraisers and expected a similar result. What I did not expect was for us to exceed totals from previous years and that is exactly what happened. Along similar lines I didn't expect that we would collect a great deal of toys, but the total is over 100 toys and climbing. The number of toys that are in, on and around a table in our Media Center is really impressive. Each one of these toys will make a positive impact on a child in Minnesota and this thought is very powerful. Sixth grade student have been collecting non-perishable food during the first week of each month and that was suspended for December and replaced with the Toys for Tota drive. I will load all of the toys into my truck and take them to a Toys for Tots drop off location tomorrow morning.
Season's Greetings and Happy Holidays to all.

ESL Family Night

This is a new event for Sioux Trail. Megan Gonzalez, ESL teacher, is responsible for the idea and for organizing the event. She recruited a terrific team of volunteers and the turn out was almost too many! Megan designed ESL Family Night as a way to bring in our ESL families, let them get more familiar with Sioux Trail and continue to build relationships with them. We had over 50 participants and the activities included bilingual bingo, Jenga, picture / shape bingo, concentration and a bean bag toss. Juice and cookies were available and there were lots of prizes for the winners of the various games. The Sioux Trail PTO supported the event with volunteers, food and prizes.

ESL family Night is not a one time event. The theme for next ESL Family Night is arts and crafts. This should be another great time to make connections and interact with one another.

Hats off to Mrs. Gonzalez for starting a terrific tradition at Sioux Trail.

Thanksgiving Eve activities

On Wednesday, November 26 we had some additional excitement at Sioux Trail. Here are some photos from the activities. These two photos are from the second grade feast. The food was traditional thanksgiving food, including corn bread, apple cider and popcorn. The clothing that the student wore reflected their heritage and there were some wonderful outfits and represetnations of the student's ancestry.

The next two photos are from the Stone Soup cookoff in first grade. The first graders each brought in various vegetables from home, prepared them and then made Stone Soup using the book "Stone Soup" as the recipe. It wouldn't be complete without some songs and Thanksgiving jokes and both classes pulled it off without a hitch.


Mr. Khamratthanome set Wednesday as the day for the fifth graders to launch the catapults they had been working on. Tuesday was testing day and there was a fair bit of fine tunining to do. On Wednesday the fifth graders took over the gym and had a shooting for distance and accuracy contest. Mr. Bones was set up on a moving target and got hit with lots of flying corks. This was a great hands on science activity that is good example of application of what had been learned.

Saturday, November 22 - Book Fair

Saturday, November 22nd was our book fair at Barnes and Noble. Barnes and Noble runs the book fair the entire time they are open - 9am - 11pm and contributes 15% of a purchase for anyone who makes a purchase and uses the prepared flier or tells the clerk that are with Sioux Trail. We raised over $3,000 and 15% of that comes back to our PTO.

We had an author and an illustrator join us for the event and several teachers and parents also came and read aloud. The 4th graders joined us and under the guidance of Mrs. Willemssen sang some wonderful songs. This brought in a number of families and helped to build the excitement.

Here are a couple of photos from the event.
The 4th grade students singing with Mrs. Willemssen

Illustrator David Geister shares his work in the book "Legend of Wisconsin".

S p e l l i n g B e e

Today was our Spelling Bee and we had 21 contestants. Our judges were Dr. DeeDee Currier; retired principal and ISD 191 board member elect, Vicki Roy; Chair of the ISD 191 School Board and Elizabeth Kautz; Burnsville Mayor. Mrs. MaryLou Foster was the pronouncer and Spelling Bee officiant. Mr. Barton and Mrs. Laatsch are the Sioux Trail Spelling Bee Coordinators.

All total there were 144 spelling words (not including the words used during the practice rounds). The Spelling Bee started at 9:30 and concluded at approximatley 11:20. We had a very attentive audience that included families, community members and students from grades 2-6.

The words that the contestants were asked to spell were challenging. Here a some of the spelling words that our contestants were asked to spell. I selected these as these are the words that a contestant misspelled.

Parliament
Entitled
Arousing
Speaking
Respiration
Allotted
Arising
Innocent
Corduroy
Antenna
Precede
Football
Astronomy
Prying
Beauteous
Fundamental
Alfalfa
Altar
Oppose

Math Night is Magnificent

Organized by Mr. Barton and Mrs. Laatsch, Sioux Trail's Night is a perfect example of what we are all about - learning with a twist of fun! The energy in the room was high and it was all about math. Our gym was transformed from a space where students are usually very physically active to place where families were very mentally active. There were at least 8 different stations that families could rotate through. Each station had a different math activity that engaged students in applying mathematics skills from all of the various strands that make up mathematics.

As always we have terrific volunteers that help make these events a success and several teachers stayed to be a part of this great event.

Tuesday night was a busy night for many families, going to Burger King Night and then back to Sioux Trail for Math Night. Our sixth graders continued making progress towards their goal of raising money for an end of the year send off by selling concessions at Math Night. Thank you to the families that assisted with that ongoing endeavor.

In February we'll be hosting Literacy Night. Last year was the first year for Literacy Night and we're very excited to continue this great opportunity - stay tuned for more details!

This rocket is "can-structed" entirely out of cans and is part of the ongoing food collection that Sioux Trail sixth grade students are leading. The idea was to collect canned food in November and then use the collected cans to construct a model. The designers selected a rocket and set to work. Cub donated the cart and we used it to store the canned food. The initial construction took over two weeks as additional building materials were required. In the end Sioux Trail families brought in over 400 cans which equaled over 570 pounds of food.

The sixth grade students posing for the picture are in Mrs. Istas' class and are the class responsible for bringing in over 1/4 of the entire cans. On Thursday the rocket was disassembled and delivered to the Eagan Resource Center.

Today (Friday, 11/14) Susan Schmidt and her crew of volunteers took over the same space (and the rest of the main hall) to sort and disitribute the Sally Foster and cookie dough that was purchased through our fall fundraiser. The fundraiser surpassed all expectations and according to inside sources we raised more money that some of the larger ISD 191 elementary schools! Thanks to all of the Sioux Trail familes and community members for their support.