Team Hyper Space: October 29-November 2 Update

    This week we have had fire safety presentation from our local fire department. The students all got to visit the fire safety house and practice having a plan to get out of a burning house. This has been Red Ribbon Week as well and we have enjoyed the different dress up days as you will see in the photos. We have also just finished our first round of Explorations. The students each went to different classes at the end of the day Monday through Thursday and got to learn to do something different. Ask your child what his or her Exploration was this week! They seemed to be enjoying themselves.
   We moved to our next part of our PBL Election project and the students were all given roles in the government of Team Hyper-Space. We worked on taking situations and determining if a law needed to be written due to the situation. The House of Representatives wrote the laws and the Senate either approved or sent them back for revision. If a law was approved then the Supreme Court got to look at the law and decide if it was Constitutional or not. If the law finally made it through our president then decided if he should approve or veto the law. Our executive branch, the president and his cabinet worked on a ten million dollar budget and that was quite an experience. The cabinet nearly had a heart attack when the legislature decided to send three million dollars in aid out east to help with Hurricane Sandy. They had to decide whether to go into debt more or to cut from their original ten million. Quite a challenge for this group but the did a great job. Ask your student about this experience. We are confident they will do well when asked about the three branches of government and how a bill becomes a law later in the year.
    We used Face Time this morning to talk with State Senator Randy Head. He was impressed with our kids so much that he has invited any of them who would be interested in serving as a page for him in Indianapolis to contact his office. He said that normally students they have are in Jr. High but after talking with us he would love to have anyone who is interested from our group. He gave the students his number and said to contact his assistant Mike Brown at 317-232-9488. We spoke with Mrs. Hirschy and she said that students serving as a page are not counted absent from school on the day they serve. If you decide to pursue this please let Mr. Brown know your student is from Riverside and a fifth grader invited via Face Time. This is a cool opportunity for our students who are interested in learning more about our government.