Wolf Pack Press - November 19, 2025
- Communications
- 18 hours ago
- 5 min read
Updated: 4 minutes ago
Stuffy Day and Thanksgiving are on the menu next week—but first, Give to the Max Day!
Upcoming Events
Thursday, November 20 - Give to the Max Day (see below)
Wednesday, November 26 - Stuffy Day! Bring a stuffy to school for the day
Thursday & Friday, November 27-28 - NO SCHOOL - Thanksgiving
Give to the Max Day
November 20 is Give to the Max Day, and it's easy to give back to St. Anthony Park Elementary with a donation to SAPSA. SAPSA provides funds for school reading programs, artists in residence, field trips, mascot costumes ... this list goes on and on!
Click HEREÂ to donate to SAPSA.
There is a separate link to donate to the Jim Schrankler Wolf Ridge Endowment fund, a sustainable fund that provides scholarships for the fifth grade trip to Wolf Ridge. Click HERE.
No Sweat!
We have a request from Jeannie and Rosaleigh in the Health Office:
Hello SAP Families,
The Health Office needs your help! We have been sending home lots and lots of sweatpants this year - but we have not gotten many returned to us. We kindly ask that you do a quick scour of your home for any sweatpants that may have come from school, and send them back with your student.Â
    
If you have any gently used sweatpants, underwear or socks you'd like to donate, we would very happily take them! (Please, no jeans or other pants.)
Donate Your Plastic Bags
Got any plastic grocery bags? Art Adventure, the art program grades 2-5 are currently engaged in, would love to use them!
Bring your PLASTIC shopping bags (grocery bags, Target white plastic bags, but not ziplocks) and they will be reused by the children to make sculptures. We are looking to get at least 600 bags. Please set in the mosaic mailbox structure in the front entry of school.Â
Literati Book Fair
A huge THANK YOU to everyone who volunteered or shopped at the book fair this year! We raised over $7000 in book sales and were able to fill 100% of teacher wish lists and replenish books in the library.
Phys Ed Update
Here is a quick update on physical education this fall from Ms. Paulsen:
Kindergarten, first and second grade just finished the ball skills unit! We worked to learn proper form for the underhand throw, overhand throw, catching, kicking, dribbling and rolling. Next week we will begin the manipulatives unit. This will include juggling scarves, hula hoops, bean bags, paddles and scoops!
Third, fourth and fifth grade students are finishing up soccer and speedball! Next, we will use our soccer and speedball skills to play Olympic team handball. Team handball is a student favorite every year!
Wolf Ridge Calendars for Sale
Each year, SAP Elementary 5th graders take an unforgettable trip to Wolf Ridge Environmental Learning Center in Finland, MN. This 5 day, 4 overnight camp experience builds core memories through outdoor adventures and experiential learning about MN History and the Lake Superior Area. The cost to attend is $300/student but NO child is turned away for lack of payment.Â
One way scholarships are provided is through the sale of calendars featuring Minnesota Wildlife. This year's photographer is Dominique Braud.Â
Calendars cost $20Â and ALL proceeds go towards funding Wolf Ridge scholarships for 5th grade students.Â
Order your Wolf Ridge 2026 calendar by filling out this form:
Library Helper
Mr. Watson, our Library and Materials Management EA, would greatly appreciate help with reshelving books for an hour during the school week.
To sign up as a library helper, click HEREÂ .
History Lesson - SAP Elementary's Connection to Yellowstone
Nathaniel P. Langford first came to St. Paul around 1854, establishing a bank with his brother-in-law William Rainey Marshall (later governor of Minnesota) and Marshall's brother Joseph. The bank failed in the crash of 1857, though, and in 1862 Langford joined an expedition to establish a wagon road to the Rocky Mountains. This brought him to the Montana gold fields near Bannack, and he started various freight and milling concerns there. In the absence of law enforcement in the area, he joined the Montana Vigilantes, a group that served "pioneer justice" against outlaw gangs and highwaymen.
In 1870, he was part of the Washburn Expedition that made some of the earliest explorations of Yellowstone Park. In his diary he writes of the sublime scenes of mountain cataracts, waterfalls, and geysers, some of which he named:
We gave such names to those of the geysers which we saw in action as we think will best illustrate their peculiarities. The one I have just described General Washburn has named "Old Faithful," because of the regularity of its eruptions, the intervals between which being from sixty to sixty-five minutes, the column of water being thrown at each eruption to the height of from eighty to one hundred feet.
Following the expedition, he was named the first superintendent of Yellowstone Park, and N. P. Langford got the nickname "National Park Langford." Receiving no salary and lacking any legal means to protect the park from trappers and despoilers, Langford was accused of neglect and removed from his position in 1877.
Returning to St. Paul, he joined Marshall, John Knapp, and others in developing some land that Marshall had purchased in the 1850s into a neighborhood. This became the "railroad suburb" of St. Anthony Park, laid out by noted landscape architect Horace Cleveland, who also designed Como Park. Cleveland's design included winding roads that conformed to the natural topography of the land.
In the 1880s, a pond called "Rocky Lake" was filled in for sanitary reasons. The former pond, which once had boats and a bridge, became Langford Park. In 1955, a new elementary school, St. Anthony Park Elementary, was built at one end of Langford Park. Nathaniel Langford, who retired in St. Paul and became a western historian, would no doubt appreciate having a park (albeit much smaller than Yellowstone, and without geysers) named in his honor, where school children play at recess in the shade of majestic trees.
Fact or Legend?
A local legend is that when Rocky Lake was being filled in, a small train that carried the fill sank at the south end, and only the engine was saved. Does a small train lie buried under the south end of Langford Park??
Sources: The Discovery of Yellowstone Park 1870 - Nathaniel Pitt Langford. A History of the City of Saint paul to 1875 - J. Fletcher Williams. "St. Anthony Park: The History of a 'Small Town' Within a City" - Ferderic Steinhauser (Ramsey County History, Spring 1970).
Spirit Wear
Rep your favorite elementary school! T-shirts ($15/kid, and $20/adult) and school signs ($10) are available for pre-order now. Email president@sapsamn.org for preorders. Or, look for in-person sales at school events.
For existing orders, shirt pickup is moved back to 10/10, not curriculum night as I initially planned.
Have a great week, Wolf Pack!
If you have suggestions for content or questions about anything in the Wolf Pack Press, please reach out to Joel Van Valin at communications@sapsamn.org