The students had a wonderful time last week celebrating Halloween in the classroom. Thank you so much for the donations that made it all possible. We hope that you also had a fun time celebrating the real deal this weekend. With all of the October fun coming to a close, we look forward to some calmer weeks ahead. Something to keep in mind is that we will not be having school next Monday, we will be having a teacher in-service day. 

This week the Younger Kids will be learning about the Aztec Empire for our Topic Work. They have really seemed to enjoy learning about these Meso-American civilizations. They have been doing a wonderful job of making connections between the different cultures that we learn about, and seeing how different elements like landforms and climate affected them all differently. 

As we get closer to Thanksgiving, you may be thinking about gratitude. A 2019 study published in the Journal of Happiness Studies found that gratitude is deeply linked to happiness even in children as young as 5. If you’re looking for some ways to practice gratitude here are a few suggestions:

• Writing thank you notes to friends and family. This one also has the added benefit of some handwriting practice.
• Talking about the WOW of the day. This is a wonderful way to start a conversation about gratitude. Focusing on a positive of the day, or something they appreciated, is a small daily activity that can quickly become a habit! 
• Creating a gratitude jar. Encourage your kiddo to write down something positive when they feel it and then at the end of the week you can read them out loud. 

This Friday is Sharing because it is the first Friday of the month. The theme for this week is “Something I am Grateful For.” To get in the spirit of gratitude, we want to thank you for being a part of our school community. We are so grateful to be able to teach these unique students everyday. Thank you! 

All the best,

Dylan, Seth, and Annie

Happy Monday Younger Kid Families,

This week marks the beginning of our newest Topic Unit which is the Maya, Inca, and Aztec cultures. We will be introducing the ideas of ancient cultures and map skills this week! The following weeks will be a deep dive into these cultures and what makes them unique. 

We are all looking forward to getting a chance to chat about your kids these upcoming Fridays! Like always, we will be preparing notes for our conference, but this year we may be adding information brought up in our conference. Please plan on receiving your copy of the conference note in the days following our discussion. During these conferences we will be talking about the student’s growth in, and SMART goals for, all academic areas, social skills and study habits. If there is anything in particular that you want to focus on, please let us know in a quick email beforehand.

Because of Parent Teacher Conferences, be sure to remember that there will be no school on October 15th or 22nd. The following Friday, October 29th, will be our Halloween party! 

Another thing to look forward to is Rivendell School receiving new roofing!  Because of this, the north side of the parking lot will be closed Friday, October 15th. On October 15th, the north entrance will serve as both an entrance and exit. See the attached map for directions on how to navigate the parking lot for the 15th only. 

From October 16th to October 24th, the traffic flow will be as usual, but you will not be able to park in the north parking lot. The entrance and exit will be normal.  Please use the parking spaces on the east side during those weeks.

One more quick reminder. If you’ve already completed the Strategic Planning survey or signed up for an in-person interview, thank you! If you have not yet participated, please remember your input is greatly appreciated. Please choose an option below to contribute to our Strategic Planning initiative:

1. Zoom Interview sessions
   Please click here to sign up for a 1-hour small-group virtual panel interview via Zoom with our strategic planning consultant.
2. Online Survey
   If you cannot attend any of the suggested in-person times, please click here to complete this survey before October 15th.

Thank you for sharing your wonderful kids with us! 

Dylan, Seth, and Annie

https://www.rivendell-school.org/youngerkids/1187-2/

Younger Kids News

Hello Parents!

It was so nice to have a chance to chat with so many of you at our parent/teacher conferences last week.  We sure are proud of all of the amazing growth we have already observed in our classrooms.  We look forward to seeing the rest of you this Friday as we have our second round of conferences.  Please remember, there is no school on this day.

We have a lot of great things happening this week at Rivendell.  There’s another visit from Zeroman, a deeper dive into the culture of the Ancient Maya and on Thursday it is school picture day!  These are just a few of the fun things to look forward to this week.

It’s that time of year again that we send out our first reminder about sending your child to school with appropriate clothing for a wide array of fall/winter weather.  We do go outside whenever we can and with the changing temperatures last week we had some pretty cold kiddos.  We recommend layers of clothing since the morning and afternoon temps can be drastically different.  Gloves or mittens, scarves, hats and boots are all items that your child will need in order to fully enjoy the outdoor experience throughout these cold months.  We would also like to ask you if you might have your child practice how to put on and fasten all of the different types of clothing that they bring to school.  This is so helpful to us and we thank you for your assistance!

The office has asked that we please pass on this information to all of you…

Fun Fest is sadly cancelled this year, but Rivendell School is happy to announce that all classes will enjoy a Halloween-themed day on October 29th full of costume-wearing, art projects, a classroom party, trick-or-treating and more!  Please keep an eye out for a sign-up to help contribute food items to the party.  Due to the current health climate, we cannot have classroom party volunteers, but your contributions are greatly appreciated.

Have a wonderful week!

Seth, Annie and Dylan

Hello Parents,

What a wonderful Fun Run we had! Thank you for all of your support getting sponsors and showing up to cheer the kids on! It was awesome to see the kids run so far! For your viewing pleasure, here is a link to a video of our 2021 Fun Run: https://youtu.be/XFRlE2WrsmQ.

With the start of October, we have a new Author of the Month! This month it is David Shannon, the author of the wonderful, No David! and A Bad Case of Stripes. Kids love his fun characters and colorful stories!

In Topic Work, we studied Earth’s moon last week (you may have seen a cool painted moon come home!) and learned about eclipses, comets and asteroids. This week we are learning about space exploration and technology. We will be doing a cool project that involves learning about rockets that have gone into space of various sizes.

Pick-up of children at the end of the day is beginning to go more smoothly. One thing we have noticed is that sometimes parents linger in the commons after they get their child to chat, visit the library or read a story. Please do not do this. We really need all parents and families to leave the building as soon as they get their child. Thank you for your cooperation with this!

Have a great week!

Annie, Dylan & Seth

Younger Kids News

Dear Parents,

We are excited to return from the weekend and be back with your wonderful kids.  There is a lot to look forward to this week!

Along with being the first day of October, Friday also brings the arrival of our Fun Run!  We are very excited to celebrate this event with our students.  We received the following info from the office and wanted to pass it along to all of you.

Students are working hard to collect pledges from sponsors to raise money for our school!  After the Fun Run, students will bring home information detailing how many laps they ran.  Then they can let their sponsors know the total and share this link for them to donate: rivendellrun21.givesmart.com. Contact Madeline@rivendell-school.org if you have questions.

Here is the schedule:

• Older Kids: 9:00-9:30 am
• Middle Kids: 9:40-10:10 am
• Younger Kids: 10:20-10:50 am
• Preschool :11:00-11:30 am

Fun Run Precautions

• The Fun Run is an outdoor event.
• Parents and family members are welcome to gather around the track, spread out, and watch their child’s class run.  Please only attend during the class’s designated time.
• All attendees must wear masks.
• Students have the option to remove their masks while running but are asked to socially distance.  

We have also been so impressed with the amazing job that our students have done with Sharing!  Therefore, we have decided to have Sharing this year on the first and the last Friday of every month.  We told the kiddos that if they forgot to bring something last week then this would be another opportunity to participate.  This week we will be learning more about the moon and with this in mind we are inviting the students to share something that looks different over time.

We wanted to pass on the following info to you about our Scholastic book orders!

It’s time for Scholastic Book Club orders! 

To see the latest book flyers and place your order, please go to clubs.scholastic.com and use Kara’s class code: QPG3T. You may enter your order at any time. Our October order will be processed on October 4th so you will receive books in time for Halloween.For additional instructions, please visit this link. 

Through Scholastic book sales, Rivendell families can purchase books at highly discounted prices and our school receives free books for our library and classrooms! Flyers that Younger Kids might like can be found here and here or shop the full Scholastic Catalog here. Don’t forget to check out our Recommendations and Wishlist! Questions? Contact Kara at kara@rivendell-school.org. Thank you!

We hope to see many of you at our Fun Run on Friday and we look forward to the rest of the week with our classes.  

Have a great week!

Seth, Dylan and Annie

Hello Parents,

Younger Kids are in the full swing of academics now with Reading and Math worksessions, Journals, Theme Writing and all of our weekly Specials. We are excited to share with you the details of our schedule and how things work in our classrooms at Back to School Night!

Back to School Night is this Thursday, September 16th from 6:40 PM to 7:10 PM. Please come to your child’s classroom to learn about our academic programs, classroom routines and more. There will be a Q&A period after our presentations. This is a time for PARENTS ONLY. Please do not bring any children or extended family to this event. There will be plenty of events down the road that all will be invited to!

Last week we began our topic unit, The Solar System. We learned about the universe and our place in it, starting with our classroom and zooming out (Rivendell, Fort Collins, Colorado, the United States of America, North America, the earth, our solar system, the Milky Way galaxy and beyond). We also learned about what a star is and that the sun is our star. The kids learned vocabulary words rotation, orbit, gravity and solar system.

This week in our Solar System studies, we will learn more about the first four planets in our solar system closest to the sun: Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. The kids will begin a fun solar system painting project as well that will take us into next week.

Each month, Younger Kids have a featured Author of the Month. September’s author is Julia Cook. Julia Cook has written many books about what kids are learning socially at this age, with fun titles, such as My Mouth is a Volcano and Tattle Tongue. Her books cover personal boundaries, sharing, making friends, tattling, talking at appropriate times and more. Feel free to ask your kids about some of the stories that we have read!

We hope you enjoyed going through your child’s first Friday Folder with them. If your child hasn’t brought it back to school yet, please send it with them tomorrow so we can fill it with more great work to send home this Friday!

We look forward to seeing you Thursday night! In the meantime, have a wonderful week!

Annie, Dylan & Seth

Monday, January 4, 2021

Happy New Year Younger Kid Families!

We are so happy to be back in the classroom with all of our wonderful students! We hope that you all had a safe, and relaxing winter break. This week marks the start of the second half of the school year so we are planning on hitting the ground running! 

This week we are starting our new Topic Unit, our new author of the month, and we’re welcoming our new student teacher, Payton!  Our topic unit for these next few weeks is going to be the continent of Europe. We will be diving into two different countries every week and looking at what makes them unique, what different languages sound like, and much more! This week though, we are starting off with learning about maps. We will be introducing the vocabulary of city, state, country, and continent starting at home. This way the students will have a solid foundation in conceptualizing the other countries that we will be talking about. 

Our author of the month will be a student favorite! We will be focusing on the beautiful illustrations and captivating stories of Eric Carle like: The Very Hungry Caterpillar, I See a Song, The Very Quiet Cricket, Brown Bear Brown Bear, and many others. 

This Wednesday is also the start of our Priority Enrollment for the 2021-2022 school year. We would love to have all of our wonderful students continue on in the Rivendell community next year. Priority Enrollment ensures that they will be able to return without the worry of missing out on open spots. 

It’s so exciting to be back in the classroom. If you have any questions or concerns please do not hesitate to let us know. 

All the best,

Dylan and Annie and Payton

Monday, October 5, 2020

Hello Younger Kid Families,

Happy Monday! This week, we are continuing our full schedule with specials and worksessions. The kids are learning to work quietly and focus on their work.

For Topic Work this week, we are focusing on Diversity. We will read the book Duck! Rabbit! and talk about how perspective can vary and how people can have different opinions and often see things differently from one another. The kids will get to talk about how they see the character and will learn how to graph the results of their diverse perspectives. 

Our Author of the Month is Aaron Reynolds. He wrote many kid favorites, such as Creepy Pair of Underwear! and Nerdy Birdy. Throughout October, we will be reading these fun, and sometimes a bit creepy, books!

A note on Friday Foders: Some weeks there will be lots of work and some weeks there may only be a page or two. There are several reasons for this. One reason is that sometimes for Reading or Math, kids do an independent hands-on activity during the worksession and don’t have a worksheet to complete to take home. Another reason could be that we had extra writing that week (for example, last week we had our Julia Cook Author of the Month writing), so there were less Reading/Math worksessions. We also could have a Topic Work project to finish. Another reason could be that your child is in a math book. We don’t send math books home until they are complete. If you don’t see a lot of work come home, please know that your child is still keeping plenty busy at school!

Scholastic Book Orders are Back! New this year, Scholastic book orders will be online. To see the latest book flyers and place your order, please go to: clubs.scholastic.com and use Kara’s class code: QPG3T.  You may enter your order at any time. For the month of October, our order will be placed on Oct 9th. For additional instructions, go to: https://www.rivendell-school.org/scholastic-book-orders/

Through Scholastic book sales, Rivendll families can purchase books at highly discounted prices and our school receives free books for our library and classrooms! Don’t forget to check out our Recommendations and Wishlist! You are welcome to order from any flyers at any time. Here are some flyers Younger Kids might like:  https://editions.mydigitalpublication.com/publication/?i=667427 and

https://editions.mydigitalpublication.com/publication/?i=667275

Questions? Contact Kara at kara@rivendell-school.org.

Parent/Teacher Conferences are October 16th and October 23rd. Please remember that there is no school on these days. If you haven’t signed up for a conference yet, please do so! We are looking forward to talking with you about your child’s progress at Rivendell!

Remember to check our YK Rivendell Pictures  to see recent photos of your kiddos!

Have a good week!

Annie and Dylan

Hello Younger Kid Families,

We are really in the swing of things in Younger Kids and are now following our schedule with regular math, reading and writing worksessions. The kids are doing well learning our classroom routines and being independent!

If you would like to see pictures of Younger Kids in action, feel free to visit the Younger Kids Classroom Pages. There you will see the most recent Younger Kids News (Monday Note) and links on the sidebar to our Author of the Month page and Younger Kids Pictures. 

Our September Author of the Month is Julia Cook.  Her fun and engaging books teach valuable social and emotional skills, from tattling (Tattle Tongue) to interrupting (My Mouth is a Volcano!). Later this month, kids will complete an Author of the Month Writing, drawing a picture and writing about their favorite Julia Cook book.

In Topic Work, over the last two weeks, we have learned about Romulus and Remus, Roman aqueducts, Roman numerals, the Roman Colosseum and more! We will be finishing up our Roman mosaic project this week. Students have been getting lots of small motor practice cutting strips of colored paper into squares for their mosaic tiles. Later this week, we will learn about Ancient Greece and listen to Greek myths as the kids decorate Greek tragedy and comedy masks and make them beautiful with glitter and feathers! 

In other news, we are getting ready for the Rivendell Fun Run! Last week, your child brought home a packet of information about Fun Run and how it works.  Please be sure to take a moment to review this.  All donations will be through Rivendell’s Fun Run Giving Site. 

Given the current health climate, we have made some changes to Fun Run in accordance with the Larimer County Health Department guidelines.

• Students will run with their age group only.  Groups will be spread out, similar to the recess schedule.
• Students will enjoy individually packaged snacks, handed out by the teacher.
• Parents, relatives, and friends of family will not be able to watch in-person.  We will film and take pictures to compile a video for your family and others to enjoy.
  
  If you have any questions, please contact Madeline at madeline@rivendell-school.org. 

We hope that you have a wonderful week!

Annie and Dylan

Happy Monday Younger Kids Families,

It was wonderful to see so many faces at the Back to School Night last week. If anyone missed it, would like a copy of the recording to send to other grown-ups in their lives, or needs another copy of the packet that was sent home, please let me know.  Also last week, students were able to take their first library books home. We ask that students bring back their books in about two weeks, by September 25th. 

This week we are wrapping up Ancient Rome and moving on to Ancient Greece. We will be diving into the mythical origins of the Roman Empire with Romulus and Remus. We will also be looking at what it would be like to be a child back in Ancient Rome. Students will have a chance to compare and contrast their own lives.

Students were working hard on their Spanish skills last week and this week! They are learning the parts of their bodies. If you would like to practice at home and get this catchy song stuck in your head, please follow this link: 

We hope that your students are bringing home lots of stories and excitement! 

And as alway, if you have any questions please feel free to ask us! 

Thanks,

Dylan and Annie

Tuesday, September 8, 2020

Hello Younger Kid Families,

You may have noticed a couple of things come home in your child’s Friday Folder last week. These are yours to keep. The empty purple folder should be sent back to school with your child on Monday (or Tuesday if we have Monday off!). 

Up until now, we have been busy learning the routines of Younger Kids and learning a bit about one another. We’ve been practicing social skills (along with social distancing!) and doing a lot of playing and exploring. This week, we will begin our Reading, Math and Writing worksessions. During a worksession, each student will be given a folder (blue for reading, red for math, green for writing) with seatwork appropriate for them, based on their individual assessment. Students will learn worksession routines, including how to ask for help and what to do when they are finished. They will still be given ample time for free choice play!

Rivendell’s overall theme for the 2020-2021 school year is Diversity. We will be weaving that theme into much of our topic work and discussions throughout the year. 

In Topic Work this week, we will delve more deeply into Ancient Rome. We will take a look at some Roman architecture and famous buildings and begin working on creating Roman mosaics. 

We will talk about this and much more at Back to School Night. This will be a live Google Meet led by your child’s teacher. For Younger Kids, this will be on Wednesday (September 9th) from 6:00 to 6:30 PM. We will email a link to join earlier that day. There will be time for questions toward the end of the meeting. If you are unable to attend virtually at this time, our meeting will be recorded and shared with you afterward. 

The early snow is a good reminder to always send your child prepared. At Rivendell, we go outside to play in all weather conditions, unless it is unsafe to do so. Snow is super fun for kids, especially if they have all they need to stay warm and dry. Please send your child to school with:

• Winter boots
• Snow pants
• Winter coat
• Hat & mittens (mittens are much easier than gloves for kids to take on and off!)
• Shoes to wear indoors and for PE
• Slippers if they would like

You are welcome to bring a storage cube or basket to keep underneath your child’s hook for the school year. This way, they can keep all of their winter gear that doesn’t fit on their hooks in it. During the week, this gear can stay at school overnight so it doesn’t have to go back and forth everyday. Please note that your child will not be able to play in the snow or go down the slides if they don’t have snow pants and boots!  Please practice with your child how to put on and take off their own gear. In Younger Kids, we place great emphasis on independence! 

We look forward to seeing you on Google Meet for Back to School Night. In the meantime, have a great week!

Annie and Dylan