By Emma Krause

Several Secondary 9^th-12^th Riverway Learning Community students participated in a scarecrow contest for Lark Toys. The goal is to make a creative scarecrow. Chelsee, Kevin, and I (Jamie Harper helped us too), decided to make an owl scarecrow. We wanted it to be unique and superb.

We decided to use wood and sticks to make part of the body. We used a hula-hoop for the owl’s head and large record disks for its eyes, and used white sheets to put over the body so you wouldn’t see any sticks or wood peeking out. We painted the owl black and brown for the body and the beak. We used yellow and black paint for the eyes and the tail.

We had so much fun making the scarecrow that we recommend it for others to do next year. It will be a great experience for you. If we win first place, we win a $100 certificate to Lark Toys.

Give to the Max

Donate to Riverway on or before November 16th to celebrate Give to the Max.

What is Give to the Max?

Give to the Max Day returns as a day to inspire unprecedented levels of charitable giving in the state of Minnesota! Our goal is to beat our own record and get 40,000 people to give to their favorite Minnesota charity on November 16. Hundreds of nonprofits will offer the opportunity to double your dollars throughout the 24 hours. Every donation you make gives your favorite organization the chance to win even more money. On November 16 your gift makes a BIG difference.

DONATE TO RIVERWAY LEARNING COMMUNITY

Ronald McDonald House fundraiser

By Brooke Powell
Edited by Madison Berg

      Hello, my name is Brooke Powell. Just recently I came up with a project to raise money for the Ronald McDonald House. A few students also joined into my project, their names are Madison, Michaela, Taylor and Jani Rae. Our fundraising activities were the “10 days of giving for RMH,” a book and bear drive, a pop tab collection and a bake sale. We did this project because we know that the Ronald McDonald House is a great place and they could definitely use the help. 

    Some of you are probably wondering what the Ronald McDonald House is…Well it’s basically a “home away from home” for both children and their families. But this isn’t just a home for anyone it’s for the families with children that have ongoing medical treatment at Mayo Clinic. There are children who have doctor’s appointments 2-3 times a week, if not more. If their parents are driving over an hour to Rochester every other day, the money they would be spending on gas would be ridiculous, right? Well, that’s were the Ronald McDonald House comes in handy.

            The Ronald McDonald House provides much more than a home for families. They also provide games, toys, movies nights, crafts, activities, and much more. Sounds like a fun place, right?

            There are 42 guest bedrooms in the Ronald McDonald House. There isn’t really a cost to stay there. Although, they do ask for a 10 dollar night donation per family, if possible, but it's not required.

            Most of the staff at the Ronald McDonald House are volunteers. They help with cleaning, greeting guests, answering phone calls and much more. They also provide a shoulder to cry on after a hard day at the hospital.

            Since you’ve learned about the Ronald McDonald House, you probably want to know more about our fundraiser. We did many different things to benefit the Ronald McDonald House. Recently we just had a bake sale at Wal-Mart. We sold baked goods and homemade crafts. Our bake sale was a great success, we made 235 dollars for the RMH. We also were able to collect roughly 50 pounds of pop tabs, 70 pounds of food, 35 pounds of cleaning supplies and household items, and some toys, movies, and art supplies for the Ronald McDonald House!

           On Tuesday October 19^th we traveled to the Ronald McDonald House in Rochester Minnesota to deliver the donations. The staff at the Ronald McDonald were extremely grateful for what we donated and surprised by how much we had accomplished. We also got a tour of the first floor and learned lots about the Ronald McDonald House. Overall this was a great project and for a great cause. We are happy we were able to help!

                                Here are some pictures of our trip to the Ronald McDonald House!

                                                                 Packing up the food

                                                           Signing the donation forms

                                                         On the tour: The game room

                                                   On the tour: The art room

                                                The giant map. People who stay in the RMH put
                                          a pin in to show where they are from. People have come
                                          from all over the world to stay there.          

                                                 We got our picture with Ronald McDonald!

Saturday School

By Madison Berg

 On Saturday, October 2, 2010, our school had our first Saturday of the school year. For this Saturday school, instead of having it at our school, we had it at Whitewater State Park. Once families arrived at Riverway, they had the choice of riding the bus, or driving their own vehicles to Whitewater. Then in a big line of cars and one bus we made our way to Whitewater State Park.
  
     Once we'd made it to Whitewater, the morning consisted of three different hikes. Everyone chose one of the three hikes to go on. The three hikes were, "The Prairie Walk", "The Hawk Walk" (a.k.a, Chimney Rock), and "The Coyote Walk."  Once everyone got back to the pavilion we had lunch. Lunch consisted of Lasagna that Fred and Dave made, and a pot luck that everyone else contributed too.

     When everyone finished lunch the afternoon sessions got started. Most of the group went on the fossil hunt. They listened to a short presentation on fossils and then went to a fossil site down the road to look for fossils. A small part of the group participated in a service learning project near the pavilion. That group walked around and picked up garbage around a large portion of the park. Overall I think everyone had a great time at this Saturday School!

Riverway Potato Harvest

By: Dominick Adank

On September 30th, Jaime Harper and a group of Secondary 9-12 students went to harvest potatoes for Fairview Farms. Fairview has been supplying potatoes and many other types of vegetables for our school lunch program. Since they have been so generous to offer us their products, we decided to lend our time and effort to help them with their work. We left our school at around 8:30 and arrived at the farm shortly after 9. We met up with John, one of the farmers, and he gave us some information on potatoes and how their farm runs. After that we started our potato picking extravaganza. They said they were growing 58 rows of 23 different types of potatoes. When we finished, we had completed about 4 rows of potatoes, which was somewhere around 1900 lbs. After we finished, John and the other farmers let us take some potatoes with us. We had such a good time; we told them we would help him out again some time in the near future.