Maple Grove Charter School - One Town. One Team. One Dream.

🎃🍬 What a BOO-tiful day for Trunk or Treat! 👻🦊 Last weekend, we enjoyed a beautiful fall day filled with Halloween fun, creative costumes, and wonderful community spirit at our annual Trunk or Treat event! A HUGE thank-you to the Fromm Historical Society for partnering with our MGCS PTO to bring this fun tradition to the Fromm property! 🧡 We are so grateful to everyone who decorated trunks, donated treats, volunteered, and came out to celebrate! It’s events like these that make our little community so special! 🎃🦊

🎃🦊 Our Maple Grove Charter School Foxes had a blast celebrating Halloween on Friday! The day was filled with pumpkins, creative costumes, classroom celebrations, and a school-wide Halloween parade! 👻🍬 So many smiles, laughs, and fun memories! Thank you to our amazing staff and families for making it such a special day!

🍁 A big thank you to the School District of Athens Central Office Team for the sweet treat! 🧡 These were absolutely amazing and such a thoughtful surprise! It’s little gestures like this that bring extra joy to our days and remind us how special it is to be part of such a caring school community. We’re so lucky to be surrounded by people who take the time to make others feel appreciated. Thank you for thinking of us and making our day a little sweeter! 🥰🍂

Maple Grove 5th graders spent a rainy morning assessing the health of the Big Rib River watershed with the help of volunteers from Marathon County's WAV program. They inventoried macro invertebrates, conducted a habitat assessment and even did some chemistry with the river water.

🍂🦊 A little teamwork goes a long way!

Our Maple Grove students put their CRISP traits into action during our Fox Den Fall Cleanup, especially stewardship—taking care of the places we share and enjoy.

With rakes and gloves brought from home, students worked together to tidy the upper and lower playgrounds, clear the paths in the woods, clean up the gardens, and organize the shed. 🌿

We’re proud of the care and effort our students put into making Maple Grove a place we can all enjoy. Way to go, Foxes! 🧡

Maple Grove 5th graders had a huge fall harvest of oyster mushrooms! Previous to this harvest they had been monitoring the mushroom garden, ensuring they only take what is safe and occasionally adding water to our totems to keep them moist. Students brought the oyster mushrooms home to experiment with cooking them.

🍂✨ Our Little Red Schoolhouse is Shining Bright! ✨🍁 A HUGE thank you to some of our wonderful neighbors for their generous donation of fall lights to brighten up Maple Grove Charter School! 🧡 As the evenings grow cooler and the days get shorter, our little red schoolhouse is glowing with warmth, color, and community spirit! 🍁✨ It’s the kindness and generosity of neighbors like you that make our little school such a special place. We are so grateful to be surrounded by a community that continues to make Maple Grove shine! 🦊❤️ Small school. Big hearts. Bright lights! ✨🍂

🎃🦊 Our Maple Grove Foxes are PUMPKIN WINNERS! 🦊🎃 WOW! What an amazing community we have! ❤️ A HUGE thank you to everyone who nominated Maple Grove Charter School, voted, shared, and rallied behind our little school! Because of YOU, our Foxes earned 3rd place in Grampa’s Farm Pumpkin Challenge! 🥉🎃 We may be a small school, but we sure have a MIGHTY community! 🧡 Your support and school spirit never cease to amaze us! A special THANK YOU to Grampa’s Farm for your generosity and for creating such a fun opportunity for local schools! We can’t wait to put those pumpkins to good use! 🎃🍂 Small school. BIG hearts. AMAZING community! 🦊❤️

A BIG Thank You from our Maple Grove Foxes!

We want to give a heartfelt THANK YOU to Mr. L for taking the time to build our new sandbox and to our amazing MGCS PTO for sponsoring the supplies to make it all possible!

It takes a village to make our school such a special place, and we are so thankful for the people who give their time, talents, and support to make wonderful things happen for our learners. Our Maple Grove Foxes are already LOVING their new sandbox, and seeing their smiles makes it all worth it!

Thank you, Mr. L and MGCS PTO, for helping create fun memories and making a difference in the lives of our Foxes. We appreciate you more than you know! 🦊

Our fourth graders at Maple Grove Charter School learned recently that our resident chickens aren't just pretty to look at, aren't just cool to hear all day long and aren't just being used for their eggs. They learned that our chickens have inherited and acquired traits that serve important functions for survival. This is a direct connection to our current Outdoor Lab learning of the three different North American bears; especially the Grizzlies studied for Fat Bear Week. Many students noticed that Backpack 89 definitely had the traits needed to survive hibernation. We think and hope that our chickens also have what they need to survive Wisconsin's harsh conditions too.

🧹💚 Celebrating Two of the BEST! 💚🧹 Custodian Appreciation Day was last Friday, and we couldn’t let it pass without celebrating the two incredible people who help keep Maple Grove running each and every day—Mr. Langenhahn and Mr. Nowacki! 🌿 Mr. Langenhahn is our daytime custodian, maintenance man, contractor, fixer-of-all-things…and honestly, we’re not sure there’s much he can’t do! But what makes Mr. L especially important to MGCS goes far beyond taking care of our building. He greets our learners in the morning, builds relationships with them throughout the day, teaches daily life skills, empowers learners to take leadership skills in helping to clean up the cafeteria, and serves as our Green Team Advisor. He takes tremendous pride in our school and helps teach our learners to do the same. 🌙 Mr. Nowacki spends his entire day as a high school student and then comes to MGCS to work! He is incredibly efficient, dependable, hardworking, and always brings a positive attitude with him. While most of us don’t get to see the work he does each night, we certainly see the results when we walk through the doors the next morning. We are so fortunate to have a young man who takes such pride in his work and does it so well. Our custodians do so much more than clean our school. They care for it—and the people inside of it. ❤️ Thank you, Mr. Langenhahn and Mr. Nowacki, for the big jobs, the little jobs, the unexpected jobs, and all of the things you quietly take care of behind the scenes. MGCS is a better place because of both of you! 🦊💚

The October Maple Grove Fox Report is here! Check out the latest news, events, and happenings from Maple Grove Charter School this month. Click the link to read all about it!
https://app.smore.com/n/6qf1z

🍯🐝 From Our Hives to Honey — The FINAL Product! 🐝🍯 Our MGCS honey journey has reached its sweetest step! But even bottling turned into another hands-on learning and problem-solving experience for our 5th graders. With a 5-gallon bucket full of liquid gold and a collection of 16 oz. bottles, our learners had a new challenge: How do we get all of this honey into these little bottles efficiently, effectively…and with the LEAST amount of sticky mess?! 😂🍯 There was trial and error, teamwork, problem-solving, adjusting, and plenty of sticky fingers along the way—but they figured it out! 💛 A HUGE thank you to Mrs. Zarins and our 5th-grade learners for taking our honey harvest through the final steps and turning what started in our two MGCS beehives into our very own bottled honey! And what would 5th grade be without a little humor? 😂 As part of their learning, students discovered exactly how bees produce honey. So naturally, when they started talking about creating labels, they came up with a potential name: 🐝🍯 “BEE-BARF!” 🤣 Will that make it onto a future MGCS honey label? We’re not ruling it out! 😂 And while our honey harvest may be finished, our job caring for the bees isn’t. 🐝❤️ Next up, we’ll prepare and wrap our hives for the Wisconsin winter and do our best to keep our bees toasty warm until spring! ❄️🐝 From caring for our bees, to harvesting and extracting, to solving the bottling challenge—and now preparing the hives for winter—this has been environmental and agriscience learning in action from beginning to end. 🌱🍯 For now, though…it’s time to enjoy the liquid gold our MGCS bees worked so hard to create! 🍯💛

We are so proud of our Maple Grove Foxes who participated in the Little Diggers Volleyball opportunity this fall! 🏐💙

These girls have been working hard, learning new skills, practicing teamwork, and having FUN on the court! We love seeing our Foxes step outside the classroom, try new things, and cheer each other on. 🦊❤️

A big thank you to everyone who helped make this opportunity possible and to the families who supported our players along the way! Thank you also to the Lady Jays Volleyball team for working with the girls helping them learn and practice!

We are so proud of you, Foxes! Keep digging, keep learning, and keep having fun!

🐝🍯 From Our Hives to Honey — Part 2! 🍯🐝 Before our honey could make its way into the extractor, our 5th graders had an important job to do—visit the hives and carefully collect the honey-filled frames! 🙌🐝 Suiting up in their protective gear, our learners headed outside for an unforgettable hands-on experience. With guidance from our beekeeping experts, they learned how to use a smoker to help keep the bees calm and how to work safely and respectfully around the hives. They carefully removed the honey-filled frames that would soon be part of our schoolwide honey-extraction demonstration. 🍯 Every step gave our learners a closer look at the teamwork, patience, and care involved in beekeeping. Our 5th graders weren’t just learning about pollinators, honey bees, or the journey from hive to jar—they were actively participating in the process themselves. 🌱 Now that the frames have made their way from the hives to the extractor, there’s only one thing left to do… ✨🍯 Stay tuned for a look at our final golden product! #MapleGroveCharterSchool #MGCSFoxes #HandsOnLearning #EnvironmentalEducation #Agriscience #HoneyBees #FromHiveToHoney #GrowingBetterTogether

🍯🐝 From Our Hives to Honey — Part 1! 🐝🍯 There was definitely a BUZZ around MGCS as our learners got to experience one of the sweetest parts of having our very own beehives—extracting our own honey! 🍯💛 Learners got a front-row seat to the entire extraction process. They watched as the wax caps were carefully removed from the honey-filled frames before the frames were placed into a centrifuge honey extractor and spun to release the honey. 🐝🍯 Of course, you can’t learn about honey without a little taste testing! 😋 Every learner, who wanted, had the chance to try some of the freshly uncapped wax with the sweet honey still tucked inside. It was sticky, sweet, and definitely a memorable experience! A HUGE thank you to RJ Mengal, Dr. Carla, Jenny Kearns, and Betinna for the time, knowledge, care, and expertise you continue to share with our learners and our MGCS honey bees. 🐝💛 Having people willing to share their talents with our kids makes experiences like this possible! But there’s another part to this honey story… 🐝 Those frames didn’t get out of the hives by themselves! Stay tuned for Part 2, when our 5th graders suit up, fire up the smoker, and head straight to the hives! 🍯🐝

The MGCS kindergarteners had a fun and fresh start to their day! 🥬 Learners harvested kale from the school garden and helped prepare it properly to make smoothies during outdoor labs. It was a super fun (and delicious) hands-on lesson filled with gathering, measuring, blending, and tasting! 😋

Maple Grove 3rd graders enjoyed a fun day at the Food and Farm Exploration Center in Plover thanks to the Athens FFA Alumni! Students had the opportunity to explore the Experience Center, check out the greenhouse, make their own mini greenhouse, and learn about agriculture. I was proud of how our students used their CRISP traits and represented our school.

🤠 RECESS… RODEO STYLE! 🐎 There’s recess… and then there’s MGCS Recess Rodeo! 🤠 Our Fox Den families saddled up and traveled through 8 different rotations around our school grounds—exploring, playing, working together, and getting to know all the amazing spaces we have for recess. And because it wouldn’t be a rodeo without a little western flair, there were plenty of cowboy hats, lassos, and even some “training calves!” 🐮😂 Beyond the fun, Recess Rodeo helps our learners practice how to safely and respectfully use each area while using their CRISP traits while building relationships with learners from different grade levels in their Fox Den families. 🦊❤️ Learning the ropes… literally! 🤠🪢