A team from Prairie Ridge Elementary recently competed in the Kansas KidWind Challenge, placing first in the Northeast Kansas regional, second at the Kansas State KidWind Challenge, and then soared to the top elementary school prize at KidWind Worlds in Madison, Wisconsin on May 20. 

The KidWind Challenge is a hands-on design competition where student teams showcase their small-scale wind turbines and solar homes. The competition has four challenging elements. Teams must design and build wind turbines to generate the most energy, tackle a knowledge quiz, conquer an on-the-spot hands-on engineering "instant" challenge, and present their design process to real panel energy professionals.

Prairie Ridge's team, Untied Shoelaces, is composed of Noah Coleman, Wyatt Hulse, and Ellis Weatherman. 

In a separate competition, Wyatt Hulse also participated in the Kansas Stock Market Game where he placed first for the whole state. In this competition, students apply math, research, and critical-thinking skills as they build and track their own investment portfolios.

Congratulations to Untied Shoelaces and Wyatt on these outstanding accomplishments!