Welcome to the Rainbow Community School Blog!
RCS News and Updates
We are so excited to share with you everything that makes Rainbow such a unique blend of holistic education, academic excellence, social responsibility, and integrated community. Here you can find our reflections on the seven domains, our opinions on mindfulness in schools, our upcoming events, and how we’re revolutionizing education from the inside out. Explore the posts below to get a sense of what being part of the Rainbow community is all about.
Spirit Week; Day 2
Today we dressed as our favorite character from a book. We had Harold from Harold and the Purple Crayon, Laura Ingles from The Little House series, Ghost A. Spade a character from a Japanese comic book, Prince Caspian from Chronicles of Narnia, Flower Fairies, The Cat...
Crazy Hair Day
Rainbow Mountain's Spirit Week is off to a fun start. Today is Crazy Hair Day and many folks have me laughing out loud with their 'dos. Take a look.
I need you to……
Social and emotional intelligence is the key to successful friendships, relationships, and careers. As we learn to develop new communication habits as adults, hopefully, our children will learn from our example, and they won’t have to unlearn poor habits later on. Compassionate communication techniques help adults and children solve conflict effectively.
Does your child have ADHD?
It’s on the radio, in the news…and in the classroom. We hear about ADD and ADHD on a regular basis, and it’s a very controversial topic. Does it even exist? Is it new or has it always existed? Is it caused by media exposure? Diet? Pollution? Given the list of symptoms, one wonders if half the population or more is on the attention deficient disorder spectrum. If so many people really have it, is it even a disorder? Rainbow Mountain teacher recently spend a whole day learning how to better identify traits of ADHD and how to serve children with attention issues in the classroom.
Rainbow Mountain Foundation's 2010 – 2011 Annual Fund Drive
Dulcimers made and played, beautiful clean hardwood floors to hold morning circles, private lockers for preteens in Omega, creative art supplies for budding artists in preschool and the lively interactions on the playground of a truly economic and socially diverse...
Mariposas Draw, Sing, Play and Explore
Smiling, squealing, Kindergarten "Mariposas" had a lovely first week of school, continuing several long-held Rainbow Mountain traditions. Beginning with themselves, students created self portraits, talked about their families, and each day shared individual...
Do Schools Kill Creativity?
A little girl from a public school was telling a little girl who attends Rainbow Mountain Children's School that she has a principal at her school. The Rainbow child boasted, "We don't have a principal at Rainbow, we have an executioner!" What we actually have is...
Inspiration
The first week of school is always inspiring. Yesterday I received a wonderful note from the parent of two students at Rainbow: This evening my kids were telling me about their day in front of a little girl who lives across the street. They were telling me about...
Heart of the Matter – Education From the Heart, For the Heart
In this issue, Rainbow's Executive Director Renee's article is titled "Education from the Heart, for the Heart." You may have seen the phrase "Education from the Heart for the Heart" as a tag line in some of Rainbow's advertisements. This isn't just a catchy phrase....
Dulcimer Preformance
For the past month Rainbow Mountain students have been learning alongside Asheville artist preparing for Imagine! An Asheville Arts Extravaganza. Fine artist, performance artist, and musicians have been all over campus. Jon Cooley is a little of all three and he is...
Kingsley Pugh – Parasols and Solar Panels
The sun was out all week, a rarity for an Asheville spring, and Kingsley Pugh took full advantage of it. He invited any interested Rainbow students to paint, outside, on paper parasols. And although the kids thought it all great fun it was more than that. Kingsley...
Lauren Rosenfeld – Shares Her To Be List
Lauren Rosenfeld came to lead a workshop on her new book Your To-Be List.
Author Maureen Healy Shares Her Insights
Author Maureen Healy came to Rainbow last week for a discussion with parents about how to foster a child’s happiness. Maureen has recently released her new book, "365 Perfect Things to Say to Your Kids " which she shared with us. It was a real pleasure to be there...
Hands of Hope
Three schools come together with three service-learning projects and one idea: to learn to change the world. By doing a good turn, known as “tikkun olam “ in Judaism, change in our corner of the world can lead to change around the world. Hands of Hope consists of...
Toubab Krewe Performs in First-grade
Every year Rainbow first-graders explore Africa through a large thematic unit which includes animals, food, biomes and stories and dances of its many cultures. African music was the focus when two members of the Asheville based Toubab Krewe visited the first and third...
School Ski Trip – What a Blast!
Approximately 75 children and adults from the Rainbow Mountain community enjoyed a fun-filled day on the slopes skiing and snow-boarding at Cataloochee in Maggie Valley, NC. Participants rose early to carpool from the school parking lot at 7:30 a.m. After arriving and...
Rainbow Mountain Soars on National Test!
The results are outstanding! This past fall, Rainbow Mountain Children’s School students, third through eighth grade, took the Stanford Achievement Test, or SAT10. Compared nationally, Rainbow students score, on the average, in the 94th percentile in Reading, the...
Words, Words, Everywhere
Spontaneous excitement about learning occurs frequently at Rainbow Mountain. Recently, a preschool teacher sharpened some snazzy pencils, slipped sparkly gel grips on them, and set them out in a basket. Two children discovered them immediately and asked what they were...
