Younger Kids News

Monday, May, 18, 2015

It is so hard to believe that this will be our last Monday Note of the year. It has been such a great school year and we feel honored for the opportunity to teach your children. Thanks for choosing Rivendell for your child’s education.

The field trip to the Museum was a  great way to kick off the last week of school! The kids made us proud today. A Museum employee stopped us and said how impressed she was by, “the kids in the purple shirts.” She said they were the most well behaved kids out of all the school groups they had today. What a great feeling!

As we enter this last week of school there is a lot going on. Please make sure that you and your child are prepared for each of these awesome activities.

Tuesday, May 19th-

Authors Share 8:00-9:00

Please plan on spending some time with your child at drop off celebrating their successes this school year. Coffee and treats will be available.  After perusing the books of work that your child has created you may take them with you when you leave.

Fun Run 1:00-2:00

Younger Kids will run from 1:30-2:00. If the weather is bad then the Fun Run will happen indoors. Volunteers please be available to help either way.

Wednesday, May 20th

Field Day 1:00-3:00

School wide activity

Thursday, May 21st

Fun Run Incentive PJ, Pizza, and Paddington!

Thank you to everyone who got back to us with their estimate donations. Looks like the Younger kids will meet their top goal!

Friday, May 22nd

Half Day, school is out at 11:30

For those of you returning next year, we will see you soon. For those of you who will no longer be with us, we wish you nothing but the best in your future adventures!

Have a great week!

Holly, Seth and Michele

Monday, May 11, 2015

Dear Parents,

It still seems strange to us that we are approaching the final days of our school year.  This year your kids have furthered their mastery of skills in reading, writing and arithmetic.  They have also learned about amazing units of study, how to be a good friend and how to be a responsible and independent member of the world around them.  We are so proud of our students and we thank you for all that you have done this year to help them grow.

The kids know that change is coming for them as the year ends and the summer begins.  Even though most are excited for this change, it is not uncommon for us to see some kids being more emotional during these last couple weeks.  You may wish to give your child a little extra reassurance and support as they navigate all of the different feelings that they may be experiencing as we wind down the year.  We will do our best to do the same.

We were all disappointed last Friday when the Fun Run was postponed but the kids handled it well.  They are very excited to be able to have a chance to run and potentially earn some incentives in the process.  In order for us to have an idea of which incentives the kids have earned we need your help!  Please email your child’s teacher as soon as you can with an estimate of the amount of donations that your child has raised.  We understand that these amounts may be different depending on the number of laps that your child runs on the day of the Fun Run, but an estimate would help us greatly.

There are so many exciting events happening next week!  Please mark these activities on your calendars…

• Monday, May 18 – Younger Kids field trip to Denver.

We are still waiting on permission slips and money for many of our students.  If we do not have these your child will be unable to join us on our trip.  Please take care of this right away!  Also, please be sure to be on time this day.  We will be leaving the school at 8:30 and will not be able to wait for late arrivals.  Thanks for your help with this!

• Tuesday, May 19 – Author’s Celebration 8:00 – 9:00 and Fun run 1:00 – 3:00

Please join us on Tuesday morning for some breakfast treats and coffee and, of course, several books of your child’s work!  We are looking forward to this meaningful event.

• Wednesday, May 20 – Field Day 1:00 – 3:00 (If you are interested in volunteering please let Elisa know ASAP!)
• Thursday, May 21 – Incentive day!  Depending on the level of funds raised we will enjoy several fun activities together on this, our last full day of school for the year.
• Friday, May 22 – Last Day of school.  Dismissal is at 11:30 and there is no aftercare on this day.

Enjoy your week!

Seth, Michele and Holly

Younger Kids

April 27, 2015

This week we will continue our exploration on Colorado History. The students are making a Colorado state fact book with all kinds of interesting information.

You should have received your child’s permission slip for our field trip to Denver Museum of Nature and Science on May 18th. We have had an overwhelming response for volunteers which we appreciate so much. The bus has availability for 5 parent volunteers for EACH class. If we have more volunteers than needed, you are more than welcome to join us but you will need to drive separately. Your child’s teacher will let you know.

Fun Run packets went home last week. Please remind your child to gather their pledges! This year we are waiting to collect pledge sheets until all donations are collected.  these sheets will be due on May 18th.  We hope to raise enough money to complete our commons remodel this summer. Check out the plans in the commons to see what the transformation will look like. We are very excited!

Mark your calendars for a special Younger Kids event!

On Tuesday, May 19th, we will be having an Author’s Share Celebration in Younger Kids and parents are invited!  We cannot tell you how proud we are of the hard work that your children have put into their learning this year. You will be able to see your child’s incredible work from this year. The classrooms will open at the normal time, 8:00, and we will continue with our celebration until 9:00.  You do not need to feel required to be there for the whole time, as we know that many of you have busy morning schedules.  We will have coffee and some breakfast yummies for you to enjoy while you look through the books. After, you may take the books with you and head on to whatever the rest of your day has in store.  We hope to see you there!

We hope you have a good week!

Holly, Seth and Michele

Younger Kids News

April 20,2015

Happy Monday to you all! We have 5 weeks left of this school year and we are going to be really busy. We will be sure to keep you up to date with all of the wonderful end of the year activities.

Many parents have asked us about a field trip and yes, we will be going to The Denver Museum of Nature and Science May 18th. A permission slip with complete details will be going home in Friday folders.

Promotion Day is tomorrow! If your child is moving up to Middle Kids, you should have received an invitation in their Friday folder. They will visit either Bryce’s or Suzanne’s room from 8:30- 11:30.

From Pat:

Please bring a small stuffed animal (mammal) to school for Math with Pat this week. We will be sorting our animals and making some graphs.

Our new and last unit for the year is Colorado History. Our essential question is

“How is Colorado both similar to and different than Colorado long ago?”

We hope you all have a wonderful week!

Michele, Seth and Holly

Younger Kids News

April, 6 2015

The younger kids have loved our mammal unit! We have had the opportunity to do a couple different mammal characteristic projects so far. The students have been developing their scientific skills in the area of classification. The next topic that we are going to focus on within our mammal unit will be mammal habitats.  To help learn about different mammals and their habitats we have a fun mammal project that will require your help! Each student will be given a mammal to research at home and then they get to create a habitat for that mammal. These creations are open for creativity but some suggestions are; a shoebox diorama or a habitat poster (browsing Pintrest might be helpful). The expectations for the mammal habitat project are:

1- The mammal must be in the habitat

2- It must be a true representation of the mammal’s habitat

These habitat projects need to be returned to school on Thursday, April 16th. If your student completes her/his project before the 16th please keep them home until this date. Our sharing this month will be earlier than usual, on April 17th, The kids will be presenting their mammal habitat to the class. The kids are pretty excited about this “homework” project and so are we. Please let us know if you have any questions.

The Scholastic book fair will be coming to Rivendell this week! The classes will be taking a tour of the book fair on Thursday. They will be filling out a little “wishlist”. You can look for these lists to come home in their Friday folders this week.

Please remember that this Friday and upcoming Monday are conference days. There will be NO school or daycare. We are looking forward to the opportunity to sit down with each of you to discuss your child’s progress this year. We only have 30 minutes for each student so we will do our best to start and end on time.

Have a great week!

Holly, Michele, and Seth

Younger Kids News

March 30, 2015

Dear Parents,

Happy Monday!

This Thursday is Colonial America Day! We will go back in time to the days when children lived much differently than they do today. We will have stations set up after lunch to show our kids what life was like when machines didn’t exist, and we relied on manual labor. Your child is encouraged to dress like a child in the colonial times. It will be a fun and exciting afternoon.

After the students go to each station, the whole school will have a pie social! If you would like to donate a pie for our social, we need 13 regular pies and 2 gluten-free.  The pies MUST be store-bought because of health code regulations.  If you can donate a pie for April 2, please let the Front Office staff know.

Please, don’t forget to sign up for your parent/teacher conference outside of your child’s classroom. If the available times do not fit your calendar, check with your child’s teacher and we can certainly accommodate your busy schedule.

Have a great week!

Michele, Seth, Holly

Monday, March 23, 2015

Dear parents,

Welcome back!  We hope that you all had wonderful breaks from school!  It has been fun being back here today with your kids.  They seem excited to be reunited with their friends and have gotten back into the school routines without a hitch.  We can hardly believe that we are entering the last couple months of the school year.  We are so proud of our students’ successes!

We are looking forward to discussing your child’s progress with you during our Spring Parent/Teacher Conferences.  Sign up sheets are located outside of our classrooms.  We encourage you to claim your spot as soon as possible.  If your schedule does not work with the times we have available, please just let us know.  We are happy to find other times if need be.

This week we are starting a new school-wide unit on Mammals.  This fun and engaging topic will be our emphasis of study for the next four weeks.  This week we are starting by defining what characteristics make an animal a mammal.  We are sure that the kids are going to enjoy this unit!

On Thursday we will also be celebrating a Rivendell tradition as we have our Annual Egg Drop.  You and your child are welcome to create an entry for this year’s event.  To make things even more exciting we will also have Crazy Hat and Hair Day on Thursday as well.  Your child may come to school with a special hairdo or hat on this day if he/she wishes.  Both of these events are voluntary.  We look forward to seeing which eggs survive the fall along with all of the wild hats and hairdos!

Younger Kids Reading Readiness Class with Brenda is being Offered Again!

Our last Reading Readiness class for the school year will begin Monday, April 6 from3:20-4:30 pm  This session will last 6 weeks with no class on May 4.  Help your child get a jump start on reading!  The class is for Younger Kids only and limited space is available.  Sign up at the front office.

Have a great week!

Seth, Holly and Michele

Younger Kids News

February 23, 2015

A huge thank you to all the parents who were able to trudge through the snow to attend our annual Rivendell Soirée. Even with the cold weather, it was a fun and successful evening.  All of the generous money raised will go to improving the Commons. We can’t wait to see what the transformation will look like this summer.

The younger kids will be traveling back to the United States after an exciting trip around South and Central America.  Our new unit is Colonial America, where we will discover life during Colonial Times and all the challenges associated with it.  Our sharing this Friday will be:

One thing you would bring with you on your journey to the New World.  

We will have sharing Friday morning before the musical.

Which reminds us…..

The musical for the parents is 12:00 on Friday!!!!! It is going to be an amazing play about the rainforest.  The kids and Tina have worked hard and are looking forward to performing this educational and adorable play. Please remember to bring a black pair of pants and black shirt in a bag for the play by Wednesday. We will keep them on their hook.

Once the musical ends, you are welcome to take your child home. If you do decide to take your actor or actress home, please make sure you let your teacher know. It helps us to keep a count of who is here and who has left. Thank you in advance.

Have a wonderful week and stay warm!

Michele, Holly, and Seth

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Dear Parents…

There are two BIG EVENTS coming up in the next two weeks!

As you have no doubt read already, the Rivendell Spring Soiree is happening this Saturday at the Country Club.  We hope to see you all there!!

Our second BIG EVENT is the Younger Kids Musical!  Your kids have been hard at work learning all of the songs, lines and dances that are part of our show.  They have practiced several times together and the show is coming together quite well!  We are sure that you will enjoy this lively show all about the rainforest so we hope you can make it to the show.  Our Musical Director, Tina, asked that we pass this along to you…

We are coming up on the YK musical quickly and the kids are excited to perform for the school and you next week! For costumes, each child needs to have black pants and a black long sleeve shirt, or as close to that as you can get without going out and buying anything. I will provide the rest of the costume pieces.

Some of the kids expressed interest in creating their own costumes, but I realize (as a parent of 4 kids) that it would require a bit of a time commitment from their parents. I would love to give them the option though, if that is something you’d like to do with your child, can you please let me know right away? If I don’t hear from you, I will just assume that I am creating the costume.

Our performance for the parents is at 12:00 noon on Friday the 27th. You are also welcome to come at 2:15 on Wednesday for our dress rehearsal during Group sing, if that time is more convenient for you. The Friday performance will be digitally recorded and you will be able to purchase a DVD at the front desk.

If you have any questions about anything, please don’t hesitate to ask. Thanks! tina@rivendell-school.org.

This is our last week studying our current theme of South and Central America.  We will be ‘visiting’ one last country this week and then will return to the States as our focus shifts to Colonial America next week.  This unit will be our focus from now until Spring Break.

We hope you are all staying warm on this blustery Tuesday!

Seth, Michele and Holly

Younger Kids News

February 2, 2015

The 100 Day party was a huge success! Thank you to all the parents who made cakes, brought cupcakes, helped staple crowns and encouraged all the kids to bring in 100 items!

We continue this week with our study of Central America, concentrating on Honduras and the huge barrier reef that can be found off of its coast. Since we began our year exploring oceans, we are able to make good connections to the kids’ prior knowledge of life in the ocean.

The Rivendell Soiree is soon approaching and will be held on Feb. 21st. The classroom teachers and amazing parents have been working hard on the classroom projects so check them out if you get a chance. Tickets for the soiree are available at the front office. Please, join us for a really fun evening!

Our Valentine’s Day party is Friday, February 13th. Please, bring in a cereal box for your child’s valentine box which we will decorate this week.. A list of each child’s name in the class went home in your child’s Friday folder last week. If you didn’t get one, we have extra. Your child will read his/her valentines during book partners so they might want to include one for their book partner.

Don’t forget: no school or daycare on February 16th!

Have a great week!

Michele, Seth and Holly