by Renee Owen | Apr 27, 2012 | News
Exotic spices filled the air along with the calls of street merchants. The bustling crowd of proud and curious parents were clamoring about. Was I really in the Rainbow playground or had I found myself transported into the middle of an Indian street bazaar? All around me I saw the blue room preschoolers dressed up in colorful and fancy clothes as they sat at their stalls (mats) along the paved area. Some stalls were shops where the children hawked trinkets like bangles and tie dyed fabric (made by the preschoolers earlier this month). Other stalls I visited were informational stalls where the student told me about yoga or cleaning brass.
India doesn’t seem like the typical subject preschoolers would learn about. So their teacher, Jessica Redford explained. “The kids were very interested in India ever since Molly went.” Molly was the after school preschool teacher with us last year. She left us and Asheville to tour India for six months. While in India she sent her former class a large box full of bangles, little wooden trinkets for counting and beautiful cloths for dress up.
Today the children celebrated all they had learned about India with their bazaar and then a large Indian feast. Their parents supplied the tasty, aromatic meal, and the children supplied their fair share of excitement.
by Renee Owen | Apr 11, 2012 | News
Millions Will Participate in the Annual Turnoff week and 139 kids of those millions will be from Rainbow Mountain. We think it’s always time to PLAY! So we choose as our team name; PLAY – Positive, Learning, Active, Youth.
Rainbow Mountain Children’s School will join thousands of schools, libraries, and community groups nationwide in a coordinated effort to encourage millions of Americans to turn off televisions, computers, and video games for seven days and turn on the world around them. Screen-Free Week is a chance for children to read, play, think, create, be more physically active, and to spend more time with friends and family.
“Screen-Free Week is a much needed respite from the screen media dominating the lives of so many children” said Renee Jackson, fifth/sixth grade teacher. “Now, more than ever, it’s imperative that we help children discover the joys of life beyond screens.”
On average, preschool children spend over four and a half hours a day consuming screen media, while older children spend over seven hours a day including multitasking. Excessive screen time is linked to a number of problems for children, including childhood obesity, poor school performance, and problems with attention span.
Screen-Free Week (formerly TV-Turnoff) is coordinated by the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, a national advocacy organization devoted to reducing the impact of commercialism on children. Since the Week’s founding in 1994, it has been celebrated by millions of children and their families worldwide. For more information, visit www.screenfree.org.
