Last Saturday, there was a Lego League competition. There were about 54 schools competing, including Madison. There were about 500 kids there (and no TVs, mind you!) Some of the things that were judged were Teamwork Project Presentation and Robot Design.

Madison’s “Lego Motion” team won first place in Project Presentation, and second place in The Alliance Competition. This was a Cedar Rapids Region event. This means that our team gets to compete at the state level in Ames next month! Good luck team!

One tradition at Madison is the show-choir, Madison Blues. It is made up of 4th and 5th graders. Last Saturday, they performed at Cocoa and Carols at Kennedy High School. They were great. In our next show, we will have highlights of the show. But before the show, we filmed them practicing with their director, Ms. Versella. Here is a look. (Video)

Remember those after school classes in guitar and jewelry art? Well, there are 3 new classes coming to Madison in January. And this time, there are classes for the younger grades, too!

First, Mrs. Crowley is back, and she will teach a Dance Team class to grades 3, 4, and 5. Also, a class of African Percussion Band (that’s drums and stuff) is offered to grades 2, 3, 4, and 5. There will also be a Clay Club, for grades 1, 2, and 3. Lots of fun in January!

Did you know Santa is in town today? Kids in the west-wing are heading out this morning to have breakfast with Santa! Awesome!

No 5th graders have drowned in Social Studies yet! But their explorer ships may be battling with each other soon. Kids move by doing well on homework and quizzes. The first team in each class to bring gold back to Spain wins a free lunch.

They are learning about the Age of Exploration in the times around the year 1500. Each kid will give a speech on an explorer they chose to do. Ahoy!

Mrs. Druschel is collecting food for the food drive. The food drive is a traditional thing that Madison does. We do this because it’s getting closer to the holiday time, and we want to cheer people up.

She is collecting canned goods, paper goods, boxed foods, toiletries, sauces, and clothing, such as hats, and gloves. The Student Advisory Council is helping Mrs. Druschel by getting some of the food together. They are also getting baby formula. Veridian, a partner to our school, is also helping to get food together and has been supporting Madison every year that we do the food drive.

November 21st , Mr. Feldman, Mrs. Christen, and Mrs. Kelling’s classes had a Thanksgiving feast. They had turkey, stuffing, potatoes with gravy, apple juice, and water. For desert, they had Pumpkin bars, and pumpkin pie. The students made place cards and tin-can turkeys for decorations.

There were quite a few feasts to eat the week before Thanksgiving. 5 Live! News caught up with Mrs. Christen, who shared the feeling of Thanksgiving. Here is our reporter Cade with Mrs. Christen. (Video)

Almost every class had a feast of some kind. The youngest graders were seen wearing colonial head wear and accessories. The 5th grade had Thanksgiving on the range, to go with their theme of cowboys on a cattle drive.

Have you ever wondered what’s behind the door by the teacher’s lounge? You can’t even see it very often. It is hidden by the fire doors. One of our features reporters, Carly, is going to find out. Here is Carly. (Video)

Oooh, mysterious. Stay tuned later in the show to find out.

Now it’s time to reveal what is behind the door behind the door. Once again, here’s Carly on the scene. (Video)

Thank you Carly for that wonderful report.

We had a couple of our news reporters interview some of the kids from Mr. Casey’s class about their indoor recess. We asked what are some of the things they like to do during indoor recess. They said they liked to play computer games, Monopoly, and Boggle. We also asked what they would like to add to their selection of indoor recess games. They said they would like Battleship and Trouble. Those are some great games, guys!

Some girls have been chosen to join a book club. This book club is fun! The book that they are reading is Judy Moody’s Bad Day. So far, they’re still in the beginning of the book.

Something that happens in the book is that Judy Moody eats pizza, so they ate pizza! Another thing that happened is Judy made a collage of herself for a school project, so they’re making a collage of themselves, too!

The main purpose of book club is to get involved in reading and to get better at reading. They are trying to relate to the character in the book. They have book club every Thursday for an hour.

A couple of our 5 Live! News reporters went to interview some of the fourth-graders from Mrs. Duthler’s class to ask about how many days they think is in Winter Break. Both of them said 9 days. Then they asked how many hours they think it would be. They both said 186 hours. Then, for a challenge, we asked how many seconds they thought it would be. One student said around 2,000 seconds. Another said 5,000,000 seconds! We think they did a good job.

We had some of our news reporters interview a couple of students from Mrs. Luetchford’s class about what they think is going to happen on the day before Winter Break. About all of them said they were going to have snacks like popcorn, and pizza. They also think they are going to do spelling and lots of other work, and after they are done working, they are going to have fun, play games, and Simon Says and basketball. We hope you have a lot of fun!

Next week is a short one: only two days. On Tuesday, the whole school is going to have a holiday sing-along. It will be around 2:00. Madison Blues will perform for us there, too. And then we will have our holiday parties! And then…..12 days for vacation!

Instant sledding! All the kids here enjoyed last week a lot. Due to the large snowstorm, we had three snow days in one week! No one can remember that happening before in December. “I’m Dreaming of a White….”

Once again, we would like to welcome all the new teachers here at Madison this year. Thanks for choosing to be with us! Our reporter Max sat down with Mrs. Luetchford to visit. Here they are. (Video)

And finally, we know that Kim was sad last week. We can speak for everyone here at Madison: Kim, you are the best!!!