The Huntley Farmside

              Volume 40 No. 14
Your hometown newspaper
Thursday April 20,2000
© 2000 Press-Republican Newspapers
School District 158 buses vandalized
by Susan Bohme
Huntley-Farmside ecJitor
To most of the students wait¬ ing at their bus stops TXiesday morning, it was just another school day. If it hadn't been for some quick work by school employees, however, Tuesday
morning could have been a real headache for the School District 158 transportation department, students and parents.
Transportation officials knew about and had planned for the construction on the intersection        of        Illinois
Highway 47 and Main Street in Huntley, which is getting underway this week. The sur¬ prise came around 5 a.m. when transportation department employees arrived for work. They discovered that someone had removed the valve stems from the tires  of 11  of the
district's 30 buses during the night.
Mechanics changed some tires, but they were able to repair many of the tires with¬ out taking them off the buses.
"The crew down there did a great job," said Paul Halverson, thed district's assis¬
tant superintendent for fiscal services. "We were able to get the vehicles changed or out quickly, and only two vehicles ran late."
Halverson said the Huntley police are investigating the vandalism.
Huntley students flex their brains at Learning Olympiad
by Susan Bohme
Huntley-Farmside editor
Students in School District 158's Exceptional Talent pro¬ gram got to flex their brains recently when they competed in a Learning Olympiad held at Boulder Ridge County Club in Lake in the Hills. Separate events were held for different age groups over the course of a week.
At the Olympiad, which is described as a "rigorous day¬ long mental exercise in cre¬ ative thinking," students were divided into teams and given tasks to complete, materials to use and a time limit for finish¬ ing. Their projects were then tested or judged and points were awarded.
High school students were given tasks such as listening to a series of songs and deter¬ mining which decade each was from; designing efficient aqueducts; coming up with a theme, a model, and a menu for a restaurant based on a piece of instrumental music; and insulating a Hershey's Kiss to keep it from melting.
For the Hershey's Kiss pro¬ ject, students were given a note card, a foam board, a straw, a couple of feet of tape, some cotton and a piece of aluminum foil. As in all the competitions, each team was given exactly the same sup¬ plies to work with. If their tape got wadded up, or some¬ thing spilled on the cotton, they had to make do with what was left.
When   time   was   up   the
Hershey's Kiss packages were placed on a heating pad for an hour after which they were tested to see how soft the chocolate had gotten.
Junior Michelle Lillibridge said that, although her group's Hershey's Kiss melted, about half of them held up to the heat. "We spent too much time thinking and not enough doing," she said. Lillibridge said she enjoyed the event and felt it was beneficial. "It helped me learn to work with others," She said.
Middle school students packaged Dorito chips so that they wouldn't break when slung at a cinder block, came up with inventions to improve safety in some way, and designed air cars.
For the air cars students were given two paper plates, two plastic cups, some news¬ paper, stir sticks, straws, and an index card and they had to design a car that would be propelled by a fan blowing from behind. After students finished their creations, the event coordinator, Greg Laufer of Prism Educational Services in Sparta, 111., drew a track on the table top, set up a fan at one end and turned it on. Students got points based on how far their cars went.
Students in third- through fifth-grade made time cap¬ sules containing the three inventions of this century they thought were the most impor¬ tant; packaged eggs so that they wouldn't break if they were sent in the mail; and designed skyscrapers out of
Farmside-Press photo by Susan Bohme
Jim Anderson,fifth grade, Priya Deshpande,fourth grade, Mark Gourley, thrid grade, and Alexandra Albanese, third grade, celebrate their success.The skyscraper they designed using index cards and masking tape held 25 pounds of textbooks, winning them full points for the project at the Learning Olympiad.
index cards.
Laufer talked briefly to the kids about how skyscrapers are designed and pointed out that the base has to hold an awful lot of weight. He then gave the kids 50 index cards, about two feet of tape and a glue stick, and told them to design a structure at least 8 inches tall that would hold at least 25 pounds.
"I have seen third-, fourth- and fifth-graders build struc¬ tures that are so strong they hold 50 to 60 pounds, so it can
be done," Laufer said.
When construction was completed, Laufer piled text books one by one on top of each structure, and, indeed, most of them held up.
Third-grader Alyssa
Secreto enjoyed the event and hopes to go back next year. "I thought it was cool how they gave us a certain amount of time and a certain amount of glue and a certain amount of tape and stuff. If they gave us as much as we wanted, it would be easy. You could keep
getting more and you wouldn't learn as much," s^ R^-
Exceptional Talent
Coordinator Linda Lanphier, who organized the event, said student response to the Olympiad was overwhelming¬ ly positive. Lanphier said com¬ ments students made on a sur¬ vey they filled out after the event indicated they thought "the activities were fun, it was a great experience, they enjoyed the food and liked the music, and they hoped to do it again next year."