Iowa.

IOWA

State tree: Oak, chosen because the oak is abundant in the state and serves as shelter, food and nesting cover for many animals and birds

State bird: Eastern Goldfinch;  It was chosen as the state bird because it is commonly found in Iowa and often stays through the winter.










State Flower: Wild Rose; It was chosen for the honor because it was one of the decorations used on the silver service which the state presented to the battleship USS Iowa that same year

Iowa weather has cold winters, warm summer. Lots of sun in the summer, rain in the spring, wind in the fall, and snow in the winter.


VAN METER

Jacob Van Meter founded our town in 1868. Van Meter has about 1,000 residents. Van Meter is about 25 minutes away from Des Monies, Iowa's biggest city. Van Meter is surrounded by farming fields. It is a very quiet and close town, because it is small. The historic landmarks we have in our town is The Bob Feller Museum, who was a baseball player. We also have Veterans Memorial in Van Meter. We do have a legend in Van Meter it is there is one about a 10 foot monster that lives in the old brick mine.

VAN METER SCHOOL

Van Meter's mascot is the bulldog. We have 207 students in the high school and each class has about 40 - 50 students/grade. The senior class has the most students with 58 people in their class. There are 44 teachers from K - 12. Our school year has 180 days. The sports that Van Meter has is softball, baseball, football, volleyball, basketball, wrestling, track, golf, rugby, and cheerleading. Since we have limited number of people for cross country and soccer, we go to Adel which is 5 minutes away to do those sports. We have a wall of pride, showing the people who made good accomplishments such as make 1st team all state.

Scaletta, Fred. "Our Growing City."http://www.vanmeter.govoffice2.com/index.asp?Type=NONE&SEC=%7B275FFD27-61A6-4A0E-AA89-0DB60A189A03%7D. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Nov 2010. <http://www.vanmeter.govoffice2.com>

Iowa Tourism Office, . "State Symbols."http://www.traveliowa.com/. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Nov 2010. <http://www.traveliowa.com/statesymbols.aspx>