Meridian Elementary School

Thank you @SouthMaconPublicLibrary for joining us at Little Hawks playgroup today! They provided us with a penguin craft and brought little backpacks donated by the Birth to Five Program. We will have more backpacks to hand out next week for anyone who wasn’t able to join us today!! Our storytime today was the book "Penguins, Penguins Everywhere" and we waddled like penguins to the song "Did You Ever See a Penguin" by the Kiboomers!! 🐧

Menu Change for Thurs. 1/25 New menu - pony shoe applesauce peas animal crackers

Roads remain to be very slick. As such, Meridian Schools are closed for Tuesday, January 23. Since the school is closed, all extra curricular events are also cancelled. The call/phone notification will go out at 6:00.

With the continued forecast for ice in the morning, Meridian Schools will be closed on Monday, January 22. Since we cancelled, hopefully this will be the incentive for mother nature to go somewhere else!

Rube Goldberg Project Meridian Elementary School 5th grade students are participating in Engineering in the Classroom, which is a program led by engineers from our community. We have 3 engineers working with our classes. Ann Talbert is from ADM working with Mrs. Meisenhelter’s class, Bryon West from AGI working with Mr. Punches’ class, and Christa Briggs working with Mr. Snively’s class. Students are going to be creating a Rube Goldberg project. The goal of the project is to insert a piece of toast into the toaster and remove the toast by two different operations. We will take our projects to the local showcase to be judged against other local schools. The top five places will be awarded prizes for their school and the top three finishers from the local competition will be eligible to advance to the regional showcase at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. So far, students have been learning the basic principles and fields of engineering. Students have learned about Newton’s three Laws of Motion, potential and kinetic energy and simple machines. Students have also been learning some new vocabulary words that have to do with becoming an engineer – visionary and researcher. We have also seen some example pictures and videos of other Rube Goldberg machines to get some inspiration. Students in each classroom will be broken into specialized teams; Design, Construction, Journal, Theme, and Advertising. Each team will have a special job in creating our project.

Congratulations to our January Students of the Month! Kindergarten: Kohen Seitz, Emma Stower, Taylor Brown, Kaiden Best 1st grade: Kinzer Hamilton, AnnaBeth McCurry, William Holdener, Adelyn Perrey 2nd grade: Hannah Keller, Talia Kinney-Coash, Bryker Woods, Teddie England 3rd grade: Anderson Oliver, Blake Manon, Luke Delatte, William Manley 4th grade: Noah Hall, Mariyah Newman, Bryley Booth 5th grade: Lauren Lester, Levi Henderson, Hudson Noland

Thursday Lunch Menu Change Due to tomorrow’s snow day the menu for Thursday will be changed. Wednesday's menu will remain the same. Thursday: French toast sticks Sausage patty Hash brown Pears

With the forecasted wind chill being -20* in the morning, Meridian Schools will be closed on Tuesday, January 16. Enjoy the snow day!

MES Lunch Menu Change Thursday: cheese pizza pineapple mixed vegetables goldfish Friday: cheese toasty tomato soup mixed fruit crackers

Congratulations to MES students Alexis Webster and Kynleigh Gillen for being selected to show their artwork in the 2024 Young Artist Showcase. This exhibition is artwork by local young artists in 5th-8th grades. The exhibit is presented by Gallery 510 and is held at the Madden Arts Center in the Anne Lloyd Gallery. The exhibit will be on display January 4th- 25th from 8:30-4:30 Monday-Friday and 10-2 on Saturdays. If possible stop in to see all the amazing artwork from our local youth artists.

Meridian Elementary has an opening for an elementary teacher which will begin on January 22. https://www.illinoiseducationjobbank.org/Job-Posting/148130/Elementary-Teacher-second-grade/job-details

Happy Holidays from Meridian Schools!

Pre-K had Buddy Movie Day at the Community Center!! Thank you to Rural King for donating the yummy popcorn!!

Some fun today in 5th grade. Students were escaping our commons with an Escape Classroom activity.

Little Hawks Playgroup will resume January 11th. Here is the newsletter for more information on playgroups and community events/activities for little ones: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1f_sveJ1uW4baGfO5-R3eG0lm286GC7jG4Ns4hWIb-zA/edit?usp=sharing

First Graders are practicing adding on with dice.

Third Grade Readers read Gingerbread Man Loose in the School and then they hunted for Gingerbreadmen in their school.

Congratulations to our Meridian Elementary School December Students of the Month! Kindergarten - Elena Murray, Cash Moronez, Elsie Lash, Nora Nashland 1st - Ruby Koehler, Milo Hall, Hudson Horne, Vivian Booth 2nd - Justin Robling, Waylon Wilson, Simon Pfeiffer, Brooklyn Keller 3rd - Lily Sauer, Cameron Kutola, Avery Colbrook, Davis Chappell 4th - Caleb Smithers, Wren Pfeiffer, Jerzee Grider 5th - Paislee Thomas, Lillyann Harris, Brylee Britton

We had a surprise visitor today!!

Fifth graders have been reading about forensic science. Today we did an experiment to try and identify each other's fingerprints 🔍