"Our Communities"

Mrs. Osborne's Class
Mid Valley Elementary School
Odell, Oregon

Mid Valley Elementary School - Odell, Oregon

Mid Valley is situated in the geographic center of the Hood River Valley. It is surrounded by fruit orchards and is adjacent to the town of Odell. The view from Mid Valley is quite scenic. Mt. Hood rises to the south, Mt. Adams to the north, the Fir Mountain hills to the east and the Cascade mountain range to the west.

Mid Valley Elementary School has grades Kindergarten through fifth. We are a large school with over 400 students, with several sessions of Kindergarten and 3 classes of 1st through 5th grade. Our special education staff works with High Needs children, Title I reading and migrant children and Talented and Gifted students.

You can visit Mid Valley's website by clicking on the picture above!

Jennifer Tyrell's Class
Talbott Elementary School
Talbott, Tennessee, U.S.A

Hello from Talbott Elementary School.  We have 226 students in our school.  Our school is a kindergarten through fifth grade.   There are two fourth grades at Talbott.  Our class is one of the fourth grade classes.  We have nineteen students in our class; there are 12 girls and seven boys.   We just finished remodeling our whole school.  They built several new classrooms, and a brand new library.

We are in the country.  We are right in-between many towns.  Knoxville is the closest large city to us.  It is about 40 miles away.  It is southwest of us.  There are many grassy areas around our school.   We have many trees.  It is very hilly around here.  The Smokey Mountains are close by.  We have two TVA Dams very close to us.  They are Cherokee and Douglas Dams.  They have nice parks to play in and you can swim there.  Many people like to fish in these lakes.  You can catch bluegill, catfish, and large mouth bass.

Our state has mild weather.  Our winters are mostly warm and our summers are hot.  We have high humidity in this area.  This winter we had very little snow.

Many people work in construction around here.   We have many factories around here that people work at.  There is a college nearby in Jefferson City where many people work.  There are also many farms in this area that people work at.

We have a bunch of fun places to go.  You can have a picnic, go hiking, swim, and look at sights.  There is a brand new aquarium in Gatlinburg, which is close by.  It has fantastic exhibits.  Dollywood is also close by.  It is an amusement park with many fun rides.  It also has a new water park, which will open up in May.  There is another water park very close by.  It is called Ogles.

Sue Kuhn's Class
Southern Bluffs Elementary School
LaCrosse, Wisconsin, U.S.A

Our School
This is our school.  Our school has 420 kids.  There are 6 grades in Southern Bluffs.  In our class there are 13 boys and 8 girls.  Almost everyone comes to school on the bus.

Our Community
This is our community.  Our community is in the country.  Most students live in houses.  The hospitals, libraries, and schools are
important buildings in our community.  They are all only a couple of miles away.   The airport, however, is about ten miles away.  Many people in our community are government workers, doctors, computer programmers, construction workers, and teachers.

Landscape
This is our landscape.  La Crosse has bluffs, coulees, and lots of trees.  There are deer, rabbits, fish, rattlesnakes, eagles, hawks, badgers, bobcats, owls, foxes, wolves, and mosquitoes.

Jamie Brehms' Class
Cross Timbers School
Edmond, Oklahoma, U.S.A

Hey there Gopher A team,
I decided to have my students create their information on the computer using PowerPoint.   If you do not have PowerPoint you can download the viewer at the Microsoft.com site.  Once you have the viewer click on the picture below to view the presentation.  

Miss Lundy's Class
Gustavus Elementary
Farmdale, Ohio, U.S.A

We are a class of nineteen fourth graders at Gustavus Elementary. Our school is very small with 250 students in grades K-5, but we think it's a great place!  Gustavus was the first centralized school in the United States, and we just celebrated our 100th anniversary two years ago. We also have the second largest school district in Ohio with 100 square miles. So, just about everyone rides the bus to school. We have lots of big fields to play on outside, but they are all surrounded by barns and cow pastures which can be pretty smelly. One day a cow got loose and tried to get into the school. At recess we like to play
soccer, kickball, basketball, and four square. We'll send you a picture of our school in the next few days.

Even though we live in the country, we are not far from many cities. Farmdale, which is in Trumbull County in northeast Ohio, is located 50 miles southeast of Cleveland and 20 miles north of Warren and Youngstown. So we have lots of fun things to do.

Our town is pretty flat but has lots of trees and farmland. It's flat because the glaciers came down during the Ice Age and bulldozed the land. We also have many historic places in our town. Across from the school is a house that was part of the Underground Railroad during the Civil War. Clarence Darrow, a famous lawyer, was born here, and his house is now a museum. We also have the Octagon House which is actually built in the shape of an octagon.

Our weather is always changing. We've had blizzards with two feet of snow in the winter and 100 degree days in the summer, but we like all of the different activities we get to do during each season. We hope you enjoyed learning about our community.

Mrs. Hackett's Class
Earl Grey School
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Hi there Gopher Team A!!

Earl Grey School goes from Nursery to Grade 8.   Our school has a great history.  It was named after Lord Earl Grey, who was the Governor-General of Canada from 1904-1911. Our school was the first junior high school in Western Canada.  The famous singer, Neil Young, once went to our school.    To learn more about our history, click on the picture above and visit our school website.

Our classroom, Room 21, is a grade 3/4 class with 4 girls and 11 boys.  Most of the students live near enough and walk to school.   Our school still serves a mainly residential area, with some houses and some apartments.  Right next door to our school is the Earl Grey Community Centre.   It provides after school activities during the summer and the winter.

Winnipeg is at the forks of the Assiniboine and the Red River.  We are almost at the geographical centre of North America.  Winnipeg is the capital city of our province, Manitoba which is one of the three prairie provinces.   Winnipeg is on very flat land, but there are hills to the north and south-west.   Because we are in the middle of the continent, we have very hot summers and very cold winters (like we are having now)!!

Winnipeg has a busy down-town area with many tall buildings.  Our tallest building is 32 stories high.  Winnipeg has all the services of a major city, but because it is not a large city, nothing is far away and traffic is not a problem.  Winnipeg has a lot of trees.  The most common is the elm.  There is a wide variety of animals in Manitoba.  In northern Manitoba, there are polar bears and a large animal called an elk.  In southern Manitoba, there are many different kinds of birds.  There is also a very large white-tail deer population.

The picture below shows us visiting the Bread&Circuses Bakery in our community.  There are many yummy goodies to eat!   We went to visit the bakery as part of our study about our community.  The owner told us many interesting facts.  We learned about a substance called gluton.   Our province has a lot of farmland and we grow a lot of grain crops such as wheat.

We also visited an Italian restaurant in our area called Colesseo.  Here we made our very own pizza.  We had a great time.   Winnipeg has many restaurants to chose from.

The picture below is of our beautiful downtown skyline.

Renee Johnson's Class
Rineyville, Kentucky

Rineyville is a small rural community. Rineyville received its name from the family who gave land for the railroad; the name of the family was Riney.  The railroad was then built in 1874, and was known as the Riney Station.  When the post office was established in the town, the name was changed to Rineyville. Rineyville is a small rural community.  The landscape is mostly gently rolling to flat.  We have a lot of farms in the area.  We have some dairy farms, tobacco farms, and we even have an Ostrich farm nearby! The first settler in Rineyville was John Wesley Pawley and his family.  He was born in England about 1743 and fought later in the American Revolution under the leadership of General Francis Marion.  After the war, he was given a land grant, which he used to live in Small County.  Under his land grant he also purchased more land in Small County.  He owned 3,000 acres of land that extended from Helmwood to Moorman’s Valley. Rineyville is located near Ft. Knox , Kentucky where all of the gold is stored by the US Military.  We are located about 7 miles from the city of Elizabethtown, where our hospital and many shopping centers, malls, and restaurants are located. Our school was originally built in 1908 and served first through fifth grade in one room and sixth through twelth in another!  Additions were added  and in 1934 a new building was built.  Rineyville School was then a High School.  In 1962 a new high school was built and Rineyville became an elementary school.  We have about 340 students in grades K-5.

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