Younger Kids News

Monday, October 28, 2019

Dear Parents…

What a fun week we have in store in Younger Kids!  The week started off with a bang this morning as we welcomed a special reptile presentation in the Commons.  While we already have completed this unit of study, today’s visit was a great reminder of all the amazing reptiles we learned about a few weeks ago.

Thursday and Friday of this week also present some memorable and fun opportunities for our kids and we want to make sure you have all the info you need to help these days run smoothly.

On Halloween day please have your child wear her/his regular clothing to school in the morning.  Your child is welcome to bring a costume to school for our afternoon festivities. We will help the kiddos to change into these costumes before the parade which begins at 2:00.  Please leave any weapons associated with the costume at home as they are not allowed on the premises. Immediately following the parade will be the classroom parties. Thank you to everyone who has volunteered to help out with the parties or bring supplies.  It should be a wonderful time!

On Friday we will be celebrating the accomplishment of reaching all of our Fun Run fundraising goals!  Younger Kids raised over $13,000 which is amazing! Our students are welcome to wear pajamas to school and bring a small stuffed animal that can accompany them for the day.  We will be watching the original Mary Poppins movie with all of the Younger Kids. We also will be providing popcorn for the kids to enjoy during the film.  

Since the Younger Kids went above and beyond the fundraising goals we want to go above and beyond for them too!  As an added bonus, we will also provide a pizza lunch for our students to thank them for their incredible success!  If your child would rather have lunch from home that is AOK. If you wish to order a hot lunch for your child, you will still need to purchase a lunch ticket from the office.  Thank you to all of you who helped your child to raise money for the Fun Run! We appreciate it very much.

As a final note, we will be experiencing some colder than average temps this week and we wanted to remind you that we go out in almost all weather.  We appreciate you helping to make sure that your child has appropriate outside clothing for the weather! 

Have a super week…

Seth, Annie and Dylan

https://www.rivendell-school.org/youngerkids/983-2/

Younger Kids News

Monday, October 21st, 2019

Happy Monday Younger Kid Families,

Last week, we finished our final day of fall conferences. We also kicked off our Fall celebrations with Fun Fest! A big thank you to everyone who volunteered to help make the night possible. It is always a great time! We love to see students, siblings, and friends having fun at their school! 

We have been learning about the five senses at school the past few weeks now. Hopefully, you have been hearing your students talk about sight, taste, eyeballs, and tongues! Our school wide units give the children an area of high interest and high engagement that they can delve deeply into. We have been doing experiments, like our sugar and salt taste test, as well as seeing the ways our body can fool our brain, like with optical illusions. This week we will be taking a deeper look into our sense of hearing. Our experiment this week will be all about how we interpret what we hear. We’ll be making art pieces based on different genres of music. It should be a blast! 

This Friday, we will have our second Younger Kids Sharing. This week’s sharing theme goes with our study of the five senses and is:

Favorite Song!

We ask that you send in a link of your child’s favorite song (a youtube video is ideal) to their teacher so it can be shared easily on Friday.  If you cannot find a link to the song, please send in title and artist so that we can look it up. Make sure your student knows the name of the song, and the artist. 

The last date to keep in mind is Picture Make Up Day on Thursday, October 24th at 10:15 am.  If you would like your student to take a new picture, please return the original that went home last week to school. 

As always, thanks for sharing your children with us, and have a fantastic week!

Dylan, Annie, and Seth 

https://www.rivendell-school.org/youngerkids/980-2/

Younger Kids News

Monday, October 14, 2019

Dear Parents,

We enjoyed meeting with some of you last Friday for your child’s conference and look forward to meeting with the rest of you this Friday. It’s so nice to be able to spend that time together to talk with you about your child!

This week, we will continue our learning of The Senses, with a closer look at our sense of taste. We’ll learn about the tongue and how it works together with other senses to enable us to experience taste. The kids will be presented with two white ‘mystery’ substances (salt and sugar), that look similar but taste very different!

This Friday, October 18th, is Fun Fest! 

5:30 PM to 8:00 PM at Rivendell School

Wear Costumes & Bring Neighbors & Friends for

Games, a Cake Walk, Dancing & Spooky Festive Fun!

For those of you who are new to Rivendell, we can’t wait for you and your child(ren) to experience the fun and for those of you who have been to a Fun Fest before, we hope you are as excited as we are! We still need donations of baked goods and stuffed animals for the cake walk. You are welcome to drop them off in the office on Thursday. Please feel free to share the Fun Fest postcards that were sent home in Friday Folders with friends and family outside of Rivendell. They are invited to the Fun Fest and there is information on the back about our next Rivendell Open House for families that may be interested in sending their children to Rivendell.

Our Halloween celebration is on October 31st, complete with a school-wide costume parade in the afternoon followed by classroom parties. Parent volunteers are welcome to attend. Please send your child to school with their labeled costume in a bag for them to change into after lunch. Please note, no weapons of any kind are permitted with costumes, even if they are a part of the character.

In more good news, Younger Kids met their Fun Run fundraising goal! We will be having our rewards celebration the day after Halloween, on Friday, November 1st. Kids are invited to wear their pajamas to school and bring a stuffie that day. We will watch the original Mary Poppins and have a movie treat too!

Have a fantastic week!

Annie, Seth and Dylan

https://www.rivendell-school.org/youngerkids/978-2/

Monday, October 7, 2019

Younger Kids News

Dear Parents…

There are many important events happening here at Rivendell in October.  We want to make sure you are aware of them!

• Parent/Teacher conferences are happening this Friday and next Friday here at Rivendell.  If you haven’t already signed up for a conference time please talk to your child’s teacher to get a time scheduled.  We look forward to meeting with you either this week or next!
• This Thursday, October 10, is Picture Day.  Each child will have their photo snapped and ordering information will come home once the proofs are prepared.
• This Friday is the deadline for turning in those Fun Run donations.  Be sure to drop those at the office at your earliest convenience.  We will let you know about how our students did with meeting the incentive levels after we have our final numbers from the office!
• Next Friday, October 18, is our Fun Fest!  We hope you can come and enjoy the festivities.  Please keep an eye out for more details on this event in our Sunday e-newsletter.
• Thursday, October 31, is Halloween and we will be celebrating with an afternoon costume parade and party.  Parent volunteers are often needed to help run the events of the party and are welcome to attend.  There are more details to come soon on this fun event!

Along with all of these great events, we are also shifting our focus to a new unit of study, The Senses.  We will be starting this week with an examination of one of the five basic senses, sight. Your children did a great job of demonstrating their learning about deserts, reptiles and Ancient Egypt last week as we completed a large final project.  These have been collected and will be part of your child’s portfolio of work at the end of the year. The theme writings that your child completed have also been bound into a book. We will give these to you at our conference as part of our discussion about writing.

Get those warm snow clothes out and ready!

Seth, Annie and Dylan

https://www.rivendell-school.org/youngerkids/975-2/

Younger Kids News

Monday, September 30th, 2019

Dear Parents,

What an amazing Fun Run on Friday! We would like to thank all of the volunteers that made this event possible, all the family members that came to cheer on the students, and of course all of the kids for running so much. Pledges and donations sheets will be due October 11th. The Fun Run this year goes to supporting our Thematic Units or Topic Units. These funds allow us to dig deeper into these Themes with interactive media, field trips, new hands-on manipulatives, and books. If you would like to donate online please click here.

On the topic of our Thematic Units, this is our last week covering Ancient Egypt, Deserts and Reptiles! We will synthesize all of the information that we have learned into a final project of designing their own Ancient Egyptian Deity. It will be a fun creative project so the kids can show us what they learned and what resonated with them! Our following Unit is a fan favorite! We will be covering the 5 basic senses! Each week we will take a look at one of the different basic senses and do an activity and writing about it. We will be starting off with sight!

Conferences will begin next week. If you have not signed up for a time make sure you do that as soon as possible. There will be no school on those two days.

Our Annual Rivendell Picnic will be this Thursday from 5:15 to 6:45.  Please join us for some dinner time fun where students will get to play with their friends and you can meet your student’s classmates and their families! There will be food trucks or you are welcome to bring your own food.

We have a big month coming up and we’re sure it’s going to be full of fun! 

Your Younger Kids Team,

Dylan, Annie and Seth

https://www.rivendell-school.org/youngerkids/972-2/

Younger Kids News

Monday, September 23, 2019

Dear Parents,

This will be an exciting week at Rivendell School! The kids have been practicing running laps for our annual Fun Run, happening this Friday! Younger Kids have good reason to get sponsors and run their best, as we have set the following YK incentives to be scheduled later this fall:

• If Younger Kids collectively raise $2000 or more, they will earn a special treat.
• If Younger Kids collectively raise $3000 or more, they will be able to wear their pajamas and bring a stuffed animal to school, plus have a special treat.
• If Younger Kids collectively raise $4000 or more, they will get all of the above, plus earn a movie to watch together.

Needless to say, our kids are very excited to earn these rewards! Thank you for all of your help getting sponsors!

For our Topic Unit on Egypt, Deserts and Reptiles this week, we will learn about various Egyptian gods and goddesses and the kids will create an obelisk, telling stories of their lives – past, present and future.

This Friday, we will have our first Younger Kids Sharing, taking place after Fun Run. Sharing at Rivendell is similar to Show-and-Tell, although there is a specific theme each time. This week’s sharing theme is:

Something Fun!

Your child is welcome to bring something that they think is fun! We have made this week’s sharing theme very broad to encourage 100% participation. Please help your child practice saying three things about their sharing item and please make sure that it is small enough to fit in your child’s cubby or backpack. We will have Sharing the last Friday of every month with a different theme each time.

You may have noticed the conference sign-up sheets posted by our classroom doors. Please sign up for a 30-minute time slot on either October 11th or October 18th. Conferences are a special time for us to talk about your child and all of the things that they are learning and doing at school. These conferences are between parents and teachers only. Please do not bring your child. We do have enrichment classes that your child is welcome to attend on those days. To sign up, click here.

We hope that you have a week as exciting as ours!

Annie, Seth and Dylan

https://www.rivendell-school.org/youngerkids/970-2/

Monday, September 16, 2019

Younger Kids News

Dear Parents,

We hope you were able to enjoy the beautiful weekend with your family!

Last week we enjoyed completing multiple desert map projects with your children.  We kept one here at school and sent another home on Friday. We hope the Egyptian desert page made it home safely!  This week we are shifting the focus of our theme to reptiles. We will be learning about the characteristics of reptiles through a whole class activity and an individual one as well.

We hope that you are enjoying going through your child’s Friday Folder!  The work inside is completed during our worksessions throughout the week.  Be sure to also be on the lookout for various notes in the Friday Folder as well.

We are excited to be here with your kiddos and we look forward to all this week has to offer.  Have a terrific week!
Seth, Annie and Dylan

https://www.rivendell-school.org/youngerkids/967-2/

Younger Kids News

Monday, September 9, 2019

Dear Younger Kid Families,

Our first week of reading and math worksessions, Topic Unit Projects, and writing sessions have gone wonderfully! The students are engaged and excited to be diving into their academic challenges after so much practice and training that past few weeks. Whether it was using math manipulatives to solve equations, or writing on their journal pages, the students are ready to learn. 

This upcoming week, we will be working on identifying and defining deserts. Starting with the deserts of the world, and then zooming into the Sahara Desert, we will be looking into how the traits of the desert affected the culture and habitat of ancient Egypt. The students will then be working with a world map and an Egypt map to understand how the two maps are related and when one map may be beneficial over the other. 

With so many exciting things happening in the classroom, you want to hear as much as you can about it! So, it can be frustrating on the car ride home when you ask about your student’s day and the only answer is “it was fine,” or “I played.” These school days are so jam-packed with learning, working, and playing that the kids are most likely coming home exhausted and maybe a little overwhelmed. To get more information out of your student, try to ask specific questions. At Back to School Night, you received a full schedule of their day.  Instead of asking about the whole day, ask more targeted questions like if: they played a new game in PE, they worked with shapes in math, or what they wrote about in their journals. 

The students are working hard learning new routines, making new friends, following instructions, and having fun. 

As always, thank you for sharing your children with us!

Dylan, Annie & Seth

https://www.rivendell-school.org/youngerkids/964-2/

Younger Kids News

Tuesday, September 3, 2019

Dear Parents,

These past two weeks have given our Younger Kids a chance to get to know one another and acclimate to classroom routines and schedules. We are now ready to dive into math and reading worksessions. This week, the kids will begin to work independently at individual seatwork and activities that we prepare for them, as we work one-on-one with each child.  We will also begin journals and theme writing this week.

Every month in Younger Kids, we feature an Author of the Month. September’s author is Julia Cook.  Her fun and engaging books teach valuable social and emotional skills. Visit the YK blog at https://www.rivendell-school.org/youngerkids/ to see the rest of this year’s authors.

You may have already heard your child talk about Egypt, as we began our Topic Unit studies on Thursday. We decided to combine our topic unit on Egypt with our next unit on Deserts and Reptiles, since much of Egypt is desert and many Egyptian myths stem from desert animals. We introduced Egypt last week, discussing the word ‘ancient’ and the coming together of Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt in 3000 BC. This week, we will learn about Egyptian pyramids, mummies and pharaohs. We’ll have fun exploring the engineering of the pyramids with sugar cube models. At the end of the week, we will complete our first theme writing to reflect on what we have learned.

You will learn more about Younger Kids’ worksessions, journals and theme writings at Back to School Night, as well as our literacy and math curriculums. We will address our classroom schedules and routines as well. Please be sure to join us! Back to School Night for Younger Kids will be this Thursday, September 5th from 6:35 to 7:05. We will meet in the Music Room. This is an adult-only informational event. Please do not bring your child, as there will be no child-care provided. We are looking forward to seeing you there!

Last Friday we sent Friday Folders home for the first time this school year.  These folders will come home every Friday and will contain your child’s work from the week and important communications from school.  Please go through the pages inside with your child, keep all of it at home and return the empty folder back to school so that we can get it stuffed and sent home again at the end of the week.  Thanks for your help with this!

Here’s to another great week of school! Thank you for sharing your children with us!

Annie, Seth & Dylan

https://www.rivendell-school.org/youngerkids/961-2/

Younger Kids News

Monday, August 26, 2019

Dear Parents,

Welcome to what we think will be another excellent school year!  We had a terrific first three days last week and we are excited to be back with our classes today.  

The beginning weeks of the school year always contain so many new things for the kids to get used to.  We are spending a lot of time building friendships and learning new routines, schedules and expectations.  

For students new to Younger Kids (YK), this week we will be completing our beginning of the year assessment.  This brief, informal assessment gives us a jumping off point for your child in each of our curriculum areas. We consider this a jumping off point because we are aware that one-shot assessments provide you with just that, one picture of a child on a given day.  For our students returning for another year in YK, we are checking to see what skills they may have strengthened over the summer and which ones might need a bit of review. As we begin our reading, writing and math worksessions in the coming weeks we will be constantly assessing our students as they are introduced to new skills.  This will give us even more information to make sure that each of our students is challenged appropriately in each and every area of our curriculum.

While we are excited to meet with you all at back to school night next Thursday, we wanted to address a few items prior to this meeting.  Please make sure to arrive prior to 8:30 every morning. We understand that things can come up that make us all late from time to time, but regularly arriving before 8:30 provides many benefits for your child.  From 8:00 – 8:30 students get to choose an activity to start their day at school rather than starting up with the scheduled items for the day. Additionally, our morning meetings typically start at 8:30 sharp. We complete many activities during this time including reviewing the day’s schedule, learning about math during our calendar activities and sometimes reading a story or having a morning check-in together as a group.  Thanks for ensuring your child gets to start her/his day by participating in all of these enriching activities!

We also wanted to mention a couple things about birthdays.  Please do not bring birthday invitations to distribute at school.  We have a Rivendell Directory that you can get with relevant contact info.  We do, however, love to celebrate your child’s birthday at school! If you choose to bring treats for your child’s birthday please give us a heads up if you can so that we can plan accordingly.  You can bring the treats in the morning, leave them with us on our counter and we will take it from there. Please remember that treats need to be store bought, free of nuts (and nut products), and in their original packaging.  Thanks for your help with this!

Lastly, we know that you have many choices in where you send your child for elementary school.  We appreciate greatly the trust you have placed in us to help educate your child. We will do everything we can to validate this trust and ensure it will be a fabulous year!

Have a great week…

Seth, Annie and Dylan

https://www.rivendell-school.org/youngerkids/952-2/