Some more school reports...

Hope you're all excited about tomorrow's wrap-up videoconference! Wait until you hear how much we have raised to help fight pediatric cancer!

Here are some of the REALLY COOL things schools have done as part of this project. We can't wait to hear more during tomorrow's event:

Brady Elementary
We sold 576 bottles of lemonade today and had $58.00 in donations. Our students, parents and members of our community really came through and supported Alex's dream.

Bushkill Elementary
We had a larger lemonade stand at our high school play. Students baked "lemony" baked goods in math classes and the parents and faculty donated as well. We were a hit!

Campbell Elementary
We have held two school-wide stands and more students have held a stand in their front yard. We have received numerous donations and expect our total to rise. Our goal is to exceed 1000 dollars!

Charleroi Area Middle School
This is just a quick update on our Lemonade Stand events for your online blog. Last week we held several different events to help raise money. We started selling "Lemon Drops," short messages students could purchase to send to friends or favorite teachers in the April edition of our school newspaper. We also held penny wars. Each homeroom had a jar decorated with their homeroom teacher making their best "sour lemon face." Students put pennies in the jar they wanted to win and quarters, nickels, dimes, and dollars in the jars they wanted to lose. Lastly, we held our 2nd annual Lemon Ball in the school gymnasium on Friday, April 18. Students made a donation to dance, play games, and hang out. We also set up our lemonade stand. We went through 48 gallons of lemonade (donated by our local grocery stores!). All of our events were tremendously successful. We were able to raise $1,695.00! That doesn't even include the money donated to the Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation through their gift shop! (We sold Alex t-shirts.) We are so proud to be part of such a special project and helping to cure pediatric cancer one cup at a time!

ELCO High School
ELCO HS will not be participating on Thursday. The conference equipment is in use by another group and our students have missed so much class time we can not afford to take another day out of class. We will be completing our project in May. The students are sponsoring a Cell Phone Day. Students would be allowed to use their cell phones in the hall between classes and at lunch. For this privilege they must buy a lemon sticker in advance. They will also receive free lemonade at lunch on Cell Phone Day if they have their sticker visible. In addition, the students will be soliciting donations from the staff to create a Lemon Tree in the main hall during our Spring Fling week in May.

Fairfield Middle School
We can't sell lemonade because of our health and wellness policy but have sold healthy snacks to raise money!

K. D. Markley Elementary
The total amount KD Markley Elementary School has raised so far is $1484.53 and we still have more money coming in from a student and a business owner.

The money has been raised in a combined effort of numerous events such as:

• Wear Yellow and donate a dollar day
• 2 fourth grader elementary lemonade stands at school functions
• Individual lemonade stands at home by some first graders
• First graders School store selling items with a lemon theme
• A business owner has volunteered to donate an undeclared amount for each "Act of Kindness" lemon that is posted on our walls.

Sinking Springs Elementary
With this amount, it brings our school's total to $1617.27! What an exciting total for our final report. Congratulations to everyone for a job well done!

Poetry Contest Voting OPEN!

We’re coming to the conclusion of week two of Alex’s Virtual Lemonade Stand. As of yesterday afternoon, we have raised more than $9,200 to help fund pediatric cancer research! Congratulations! (You can click on the table image below to see the data larger!)

Our poetry contest entries are now up online and voting is OPEN! So VOTE for your favorite - - and make sure your parents, friends, and colleagues vote too! You can access the online voting poll here:

Remember, we want your school to be included in our highlights video! Send us your video footage and photographs! Photos and video are due on MONDAY. Make sure your students aren’t left out!

We can’t wait to see your presentations during next week’s closing celebration videoconference! IF YOUR SCHOOL CANNOT ATTEND THIS CELEBRATION, please let me know by Monday.

Here are some of the GREAT things schools are doing:

EHMIS
On Wednesday, our Superintendent was the guest pourer of our cafeteria lemonade stand. She matched every staff contribution by buying them their second cup! Great day! Today our cafeteria lemonade stand sold Rita's Italian ice cups for $1. Today, its back to lemonade. Today is also our afterschool Lemonade Block party!

Brady Elementary We wanted to let you know that Brady Elementary has held Lemonade Stands the last two Wednesdays. Both days we sold more cups of lemonade than the numbers of kids in our school. Cups were sold for 25 cents and we raise a total of $102.40 so far. Next Wednesday we are selling bottles of lemonade for $1.00 and so far we have 420 bottles ordered.

Kilpatrick Elementary
Individual students have been collecting in their neighborhoods. Our BIG school lemonade stand will be the night of April 24...after the conclusion. We expect to make about $500.

Katy Elementary School
We sold lemonade and Stacy's Pita Chips the night of our 4th grade program. We are continuing to sell chips.

North Central School Today was our first lemonade stand. We have been doing a lot with learning about Alex, the type of cancer she had, other important information. We created a lemonade stand, a lemon tree with lemons for donations, and we also are working on a presentation to give to the whole school. We have a girl who wrote a song, and hosting an elementary coloring contest. We are having a great time with this and are learning a lot!

Schools are doing some REALLY COOL things!

Welcome to week two of Alex’s Virtual Lemonade Stand! And I happy to announce that with 10 schools reporting, we have raised $6,923.91already!! It’s been great to hear your stories (check out more school stories below!) about how you’re making a difference. Here's the breakdown:

A few reminders:

• The deadline for the poetry contest has been extended. Schools may submit up to 4 poems for consideration. Poems must be received by 5:00 p.m. on THURSDAY, APRIL 17. You’ll be able to access the online voting system for the poems from the website or blog on Friday. (You’ll see a “CLICK TO VOTE” button!”
  
• The deadline for the poster contest has been extended to Thursday, April 17^th as well. Get your poster in by then! Posters will be judged by staff members from the University of Pennsylvania’s ISC department.
• Don’t forget to send us your fundraising reports! To report your daily totals, please use the web system (http://www.magpi.net/programs/alexslemonade.html) . You should see a button on the right hand side of the screen that says “submit your daily fundraising report.” I cannot guarantee that all totals we receive via email will make it into the system… so many, many thanks in advance for using this system.
• And it’s time to start planning your presentation for the wrap-up videoconference!!! Each school will 90 seconds (I know, it’s not a lot of time - - and unfortunately we will need to cut off schools that go over this time frame!) to present your Alex’s Virtual Lemonade stand projects. PRESENTATIONS SHOULD BE CREATIVE! Some ideas that have worked well in the past: songs, skits, news reports, plays, video, etc.
• BE INCLUDED IN OUR 2008 HIGHLIGHTS VIDEO!Be SURE to document your schools projects (in both video and photos) so we can include your school in our 2008 highlights video. Email photos/video of your school project to Heather Weisse (hweisse at magpi.net) by MONDAY, APRIL 21. This way, we can make sure your school makes it into our video!

Schools are doing real cool things! Here are the latest school reports:

E. H. Markle Intermediate School
We had the high school cheerleaders come over to the middle school to be guest pourers for our lemonade stand! Lemonade being sold during all lunch shifts. T shirts and paper lemons are also being sold.

Ripley Union Lewis Huntington Elementary
Our Art Enrichment 3rd & 4th grades designed and painted aprons with lemon themes and then held a silent auction that concluded on April 13 when they served lemon desserts and lemonade. The aprons were displayed at the Riverhouse Restaurant for a week and anyone could go in and leave a bid. We had a great time doing it while helping raise money for a wonderful cause and are proud to be a part of the project.

Robeson Elementary
We have had wonderful support throughout our sale! The book that you sent, Alex and the Amazing Lemonade Stand had circulated throughout our classes and has really brought this amazing little girls story into our students hearts.

Sinking Springs Elementary Sinking Springs Elementary visited all of our 4th, 5th, and 6th grade classrooms last week to share Alex's inspirational story. We held our lemonade stand yesterday and today during lunch periods, and with the generosity of student and staff have raised a total of $1140.68! We will continue to collect donations through the end of the week and let you know what our grand total is. It's been an exciting adventure!

What a great week!

All,

Hope you’ve had a great first week of “Alex’s Virtual Lemonade Stand!” So far, with only 7 schools reporting, we’ve raised more than $2000! Here are the fundraising totals:

A few reminders:

• POETRY CONTEST ENTRIES ARE DUE TODAY!
• Instructions for putting together your presentations for the final event will be sent early next week.
• POSTER CONTEST: Your school's poster contest entry is due on April 16th!
• Record your projects and send us the pictures and video for our highlights video! Material is due on Monday, April 21.

Here are the school reports we’re received so far!

Bushkill Elementary School:

During parent teacher conferences and an arts night we hosted a lemonade stand called The Bushkill Lemon and we also sold "lemony" baked goods.

Cheltenham High School:

Today, we sold lemonade and other lemon goodies. We also sold CHS '08 customized t-shirts and paper lemons for our lemon tree hanging in the main lobby.

E.H. Markle Intermediate School:

We had our school's mascot - a mustang - stop by our lunch shifts as our "guest pourer". The students and staff are buying yellow T-shirts with our Alex's Lemonade Stand logo.

Great Valley Middle School:

Held our first lemonade stand that we held at the Great Valley Middle School Arts Night. Unfortunately the book fair people set up a stand offering FREE brownies and juice……….right next to our stand where we were selling Lemonade and cookies……so we hope our profits will be better next week at the 4th grade chorus concert at KD Markley.

The Lemon Update 2008 #1

Many many thanks to all of you who made our kick-off event so wonderful yesterday! We were truly inspired by all of the things your schools are doing to make a difference, and hope you are, too!

And we were OVERWHELMED by all of your lemonade spirit!!! GREAT JOB! Here are this year's Lemon Spirit Award winners:

Lots of Lemon-y Enthusiasm: Colonial IU, Bushkill Elementary (you both had great props!)
Amazing Original Lyrics: Cheltenham High School, East Bradford Elementary (Can we get copies of your songs/raps?)
Catchy Commercial: Kilpatrick Elementary
Lemon-y Dramatics : Katy Elementary (we loved the Hannah Montana impression!)
Lemon-y Cheerleaders: Charleroi Area Middle School, Penn Wynne Elementary, Brady Elementary

And, with only four schools reporting so far, we've raised over $600 for pediatric cancer research! Great job everyone!


Don't forget to fill out the online fundraising form each day your school sells lemonade. We'll post the amounts on the blog each afternoon.

TELL US YOUR STORY. Send us your school updates and photos too! (You can always report on what you're doing through the comments section on the daily fundraising form). When you tell us what your school is doing, we can include your school's activities in our daily lemon update!

BE INCLUDED IN OUR 2008 HIGHLIGHTS VIDEO!Be SURE to document your schools projects (in both video and photos) so we can include your school in our 2008 highlights video. Email photos/video of your school project to Heather Weisse (hweisse at magpi.net) by MONDAY, APRIL 21. This way, we can make sure your school makes it into our video!

WATCH YESTERDAY'S PROGRAM: Take a look at yesterday's kick-off videoconference by viewing the webstream: http://commonsvcg.oar.net/MAGPI/. It will be up for two weeks.

POSTER CONTEST: Your school's poster contest entry is due on April 16th! See the guidelines on the project website: http://www.magpi.net/programs/alexslemonade-poster.html

POETRY CONTEST: Your school's poetry contest entry is due on Friday, April 11th! See the guidelines on the project website: http://www.magpi.net/programs/alexslemonade-poetry.html

School Intros: Kilpatrick Elementary School

Odessa Kilpatrick Elementary School in Katy, Texas has been in existence for 5 years. We have an Australian theme throughout the school. Koalas are our mascots. A couple of years ago we grew so fast that we had the largest population of any elementary school in the entire state of Texas. (Over 1600 students).

The Challenge classes are the ones that are helping with the fundraising. Challenge classes consist of our district identified gifted and talented students. We have 47 students in these classes from K – 5^th graders. Each grade comes to “Challenge” on a different day of the week. These highly creative and energetic kids are motivated to earn money for cancer research. Their teacher, Mrs. Sederholm, enjoys helping out with worthy projects. Her daughter at the age of 13 started a fundraiser in the community which raised $15,000 for an 8th grade classmate. Maya, the daughter, and a friend, organized an event called Dancers against Cancer where 10 local dance companies volunteered their time and put on THE performance of the decade.

Here are a couple of pictures showing students receiving the “Boomerang Award” which is awarded to children who do an exceptional job of following our rules, treating others kindly, and exhibiting the character traits we value.

What a great kick-off event! Some photos....

School Intros: East Bradford Elementary, Penns Valley Intermediate, Penn Wynne Elementary, Delaware Valley High, Ripley Union, Rock Lake, Charleroi

East Bradford Elementary School

East Bradford Elementary is located in historic West Chester, Pennsylvania. East Bradford is one of the ten elementary schools in West Chester Area School District. East Bradford has grades kindergarten through fifth.

West Chester Area School District is located in a 75-square-mile suburban, urban, and rural area in central Chester County. West Chester Borough is the hub of the district. The surrounding townships of East Bradford, East Goshen, West Goshen, West Whiteland, Westtown, and Thornbury, all in Chester County, are part of the district, as is Thornbury Township in adjacent Delaware County.

East Bradford is proud to participate in Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation. This is the 3rd year we raised money for Alex’s Lemonade Stand. And this will be the 2nd year we will participate in Alex’s Lemonade Stand Challenge, in which fifth grade, third grade, and kindergarten design different lemonade recipes. The students and staff vote which lemonade they like best. Last year we raised over $1,000.00. This year we hope to raise more and promote good citizenship for all students. Together we can make a difference.

Penns Valley Intermediate School

We are looking forward at Penns Valley Intermediate School to hosting our first Alex's Lemonade Stand. PVI is located in the center of Pennsylvania, near Penn State University. We have 235 students in grades 5 and 6. The principal's advisory group is the sponsor of our stand. One student from each homeroom is a member of this group. PVI has also participated in Relay for Life for the past two years.

Penn Wynne Elementary School

Penn Wynne is the home of the original Alex's Lemonade Stand. We are located in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, just outside of Philadelphia.

These pictures were taken in front of a mural our art club made in memory of Alex Scott.

Delaware Valley High School

Delaware Valley High School is located in Milford, Pa. We have approximately 2,000 students in our high school alone! We are about a mile from the states of New Jersey and New York, which means we have many students in our school who are originally from larger cities. Our students are both dedicated to academics and other extracurricular activities. This year alone DV had state winners in athletics, music, and other clubs. Our school colors are black and white.

Ripley Union Lewis Huntington School District

The Ripley Union Lewis Huntington School District is located in rural Appalachia on the Ohio River in Ripley, Ohio. We have 1200 students in our school district. We are a Learn and Serve America Model School and we complete several service learning projects each year. We are happy to be a part of Alex's Lemonade Stand. Our students plan to have several fundraisers throughout the two week event. One of our fundraisers include auctioning off yellow aprons that our students are going to hand paint. We are conducting a lemonade and dessert event for approximately 80 people. Ripley students are proud of their heritage which is rich and deeply embedded in the Underground Railroad. Our ancestors helped slaves to freedom and our students want to carry on this wonderful tradition by helping free people of cancer.

Rock Lake School

Our school is a K-12 school in rural North Dakota. We currently have sixty students enrolled in our school. In the third and fourth grade we have 12 students. We were introduced to this project though EduTech and Tabitha Lang. Our students were also learning about donations and helping others when this opportunity came along.

Our plans for the two weeks between April 8^th and April 24^th we will have a coloring contest, researching lemons and lemonade, and finding facts about lemons and lemonade. We will also hold three lemonade stands between the two weeks. The senior class will be donating cookies to sell as well. We received donations from Choice Financial and people in the community for the supplies of our booth. This has become a community project.

Charleroi Area Middle School

Greetings from Charleroi, Pennsylvania! We are students and teachers at Charleroi Area Middle School, located just south of Pittsburgh. This is our second year participating in Alex’s Lemonade Stand and we are so excited to be part of something so worthwhile! Our own Charleroi Cougars will be holding Lemonade Stand events the week of April 14-18, including penny wars, newspaper shout-outs, a poster contest, and of course our Lemon Ball complete with our Lemonade Stand! We wish everyone the best of luck and we are happy to join in the fight again pediatric cancer, one cup at a time!

Leonade Stand Kick's Off With CBS News Anchor

Larry Mendte, a "hometown guy" whose first job in the news business was delivering the Evening Bulletin as a boy, takes special pleasure in the fact that, as an adult, he is still delivering the evening news in Philadelphia.

One of Philadelphia's most honored broadcasters, Mendte has earned 43 regional Emmy Awards since returning to the Delaware Valley, a record four of them in the "Best Anchor" category. In two recent readers' polls conducted by The Main Line Times and the Delaware County Daily Times, Mendte was voted the area's favorite news anchor. Among his honors, Mendte has been inducted into The Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia's Hall of Fame and was named one of the 75 Greatest Living Philadelphians
by the Philadelphia Daily News.

For Larry's full bio, visit the CBS News Site

School Intros: Emory Markle, Colonial IU, Eastern Lebanon County High School, and Campbell Elementary

Campbell Elementary

I am a GT facilitator at Campbell Elementary which is located just outside of Houston in Sugar Land, Texas. My fourth grade GT class had begun our “Math Around Town” unit, part of the Texas Performance Standard Project. It is a math based unit that poses real world math application problems. It is a difficult unit but through the use of technology, the kids learn a lot and really seem to enjoy it. We had just begun the unit when the Alex’s Lemonade Stand opportunity came my way, which I previously knew nothing about. After just a little bit of research, I really thought that I could apply the lemonade stand concept to our existing unit, and get a bigger buy-in by my students, and at the same time raise school awareness of childhood cancer. When I posed it to the students, they were immediately on board.

This project has been completely student driven. When they were in the initial brainstorming phase, the students determined that specific roles were necessary. Therefore, we have one project manager and a few supervisory roles. The bulk of the students are in the general workforce. Once those roles were decided upon, the real work began. We have already conducted one stand at our school fundraiser and our second and final stand will be held on April 10th. We are thrilled to be a part of this event and I am most excited about how much my students have learned!

Easter Lebanon County High School

Eastern Lebanon County High School (ELCO) is located in south central Pennsylvania, approximately 25 miles east of Harrisburg. Our school is located in a rural setting between four small towns that comprise our district. The school population at the high school is 850 students in grades 9-12 with a graduating class averaging just over 200 students. Our school mascot is the Raider and our school colors are blue and gold.

Colonial Academy

The Life Skills Support class at Colonial Intermediate Unit 20 services young adults 18-21 years of age. Located at our main administrative office, the students learn functional academic, daily living and work related skills needed to become independent members of their communities. The skills learned in the classroom are applied while making soup and selling snacks throughout the building. All of our students are also involved in outside work experiences in an effort to successfully transition them into a permanent job placement. Our Lemonade Stand for this event was constructed by Alternative Education students who attend our Colonial Academy.

Emory H. Markle Intermediate School

EHMIS is a middle school located in Hanover, PA. We are the colts. We have about a 1000 students in grades 6 to 8. We are very active in the community and like to try to help however we can. We are excited to be able to help Alex's Lemonade to fight childhood cancer.

Questions for Liz Scott? And a great new blog from the "kidz" at K.D. Markley!

Hope everyone is getting excited about our kick-off videoconference on Tuesday! Would your students like the opportunity to ask Liz Scott a question during our kick-off videoconference celebration? If so, please submit up to 5 questions via email to me (hweisse at magpi.net) by 8:00 p.m. EDT on Friday, April 4, 2008. We’ll select up to 5 sites to ask one question as part of our kick-off videoconference event! Sites who are selected to ask questions will be notified via email on Monday.

And many thanks to all the great students at K. D. Markley Elementary School in Malvern, Pennsylvania! They set up a fantastic blog for their school's lemonade stand project - - all dedicated to "Kidz helping Kidz!" Looks like their school lemonade poster contest is going great -- and we can't wait to hear the "Lemonade Flo!" We're also looking forward to reading more about the acts of kindness that K. D. Markley students are doing.... GREAT JOB!

We're getting ready for our kick off next week!

Hope everyone is excited about the kick-off for Alex's Virtual Lemonade Stand next week! We're thrilled that thirty-one schools will be joining us for the project this year! We have schools from Pennsylvania, Texas, Ohio, North Dakota, New York and Michigan participating!

New this year is the virtual scavenger hunt that will take place during the kick-off videoconference. Be sure to download the scavenger hunt worksheet from the project website
(the handout will be available on Monday, April 7th!) and distribute it to all the participating students. Then, have students pay careful attention to other school's introductions during the spirit rally and complete the scavenger hunt! Using the answers from the scavenger hunt, students will be able to create their own personalized "lemon" bingo boards to use during our closing videoconference event.

Speaking of the kick-off event, have you prepared your school's introduction yet? Remember, your school will have 30 seconds to introduce themselves as part of the kick-off videoconference. Here are the instructions for the 30 second intros:

• Your school will have 30 seconds to introduce yourself - - no more.
• Make sure to tell us your school's name, where you are located, why you are participating in this project and an interesting fact about your school or community - MAKE THE INTRODUCTIONS CREATIVE
• Interactive videoconference participants will have an opportunity to share this information as part of the videoconference
• EMAIL US a brief paragraph about your school and a photo to be included on the project blog! Please email this information to Heather Weisse at hweisse at magpi.net no later than Tuesday, April 8th!

Some other reminders:

POSTER CONTEST: Your school's poster contest entry is due on April 16th! See the guidelines on the project website: http://www.magpi.net/programs/alexslemonade-poster.html

POETRY CONTEST: Your school's poetry contest entry is due on Friday, April 11th! See the guidelines on the project website: http://www.magpi.net/programs/alexslemonade-poetry.html

And, last but not least, have you thought about your lemonade stand and what you'll do for your project?

Schools participating in this project will have 2 weeks to host an Alex's Lemonade Stand. Sites can have a one-day lemonade stand fundraiser or hold a stand every day for a week - - or some other combination. Need ideas? No idea where to start? Download the guide (from the project website!) for setting up events! The guide is in PDF format.

Remember to report your sales totals using the web-based form. The form will be live beginning on April 8th.

That's all for now! Check back on Friday for the kick-off videoconference outline!