May Day 2015
Here are a few photos from our annual May Day Celebration. We’d like to extend warm thanks to everyone who joined us. Photo’s courtesy of Luxe House Photographic.
See you next year!
Screen-Free Week
WHAT is Screen-Free Week?
Screen-Free Week is an annual, international celebration when families, schools, and communities swap digital entertainment for the joys of life beyond the screen. Instead of watching TV, surfing the web, or playing with apps and video games, they read, play, think, create, get active, and spend more time with family and friends.
Remember, Screen-Free Week is about taking a break from digital entertainment. You can celebrate, and still use devices for work or school. But if screens of any kind interfere with family time (including meals), you may want to rethink how and when you’re using them.
WHY Celebrate?
Regardless of whether children are consuming “good” or “bad” programming, it’s clear that digital entertainment dominates the lives of far too many kids, displacing all sorts of other activities that are integral to childhood. Excessive screen time is linked to poor school performance, childhood obesity, and attention problems. And it is primarily through screens that children are exposed to harmful marketing.
Screen-Free Week is a fun way to reduce our dependence on digital entertainment, including television, video games, smartphones, tablets, and computers. It’s a chance for children—and adults—to power down and reconnect with the world around them.
Here at Rainbow our 6th graders posted a large banner on the deck with some information about Screen Free Week. They even listed alternatives to screen time, promoting face-to-face conversations and interactions over electronic ones. The 6th graders will also write letters to Mountain Xpress, sharing some information about the importance of a “tech cleanse.”
Rainbow Teacher Appreciation day
Rainbow Teacher Appreciation day
When: Friday, April 17th, 2015.
Where: Butterfly House
When: 8:30 am – 9:15 am
The Annual Rainbow Science Fair
Science Investigations Yield So Many Answers!
Did you ever go to a symposium at a convention center as a kid? Like a space symposium?
Because that’s what the science fair was like. All the classrooms transformed into exposition sites, complete with beautiful posters, and display boards of colorful, imaginative, and quite advanced scientific experiments and investigations last week.
Students On Tour
Every class at Rainbow had a chance to visit other classrooms to see what other students did. In fact, each class played host, and each class visited all the other classrooms on campus and listened while other students presented their work.
Here you can see Omega visiting the fifth grade classroom. Not only were the fifth graders great presenters, but they also had the Omegans quite interested in what they were doing!
In fourth grade, many more fun and innovative projects characterized the classroom. Fourth graders presented to second grade. It’s simply amazing how well fourth grade presented and how attentive second grade was!
Wouldn’t you like to know more about “What does and does not conduct electricity?” Yeah, we were interested, too.
All around, these projects were quite sophisticated and complex. Each student investigated what interested him or her. To be sure, they take the meaning, “citizen scientist” to a whole new level!
In the video below, we focus on two third grade presenters. Their projects show such in-depth research!
Another third grader looked at hovercraft and if the amount of air in them affected how they float:
And really, does corn syrup actually make bubbles last longer? You’d think so, right?
You’ll have to ask the third grade to find out! How’s that for a cliffhanger?
Over in Omega, you could get a glimpse into how well you read emotions if you’re not looking at someone’s whole face to take in all the information:
And take a look at the Omega classroom itself. It looked like a veritable convention center of scientists and peers at work!
We have so many more fun photos to share! The photos below are courtesy of Sheila Mraz. She was all over campus snapping photos of all the exhibits and presentations.
And we have a resident photographer on campus! The following photos were taken by Ban, one of our Omega students!
You can really capture a glimpse of the breadth, scope and sophistication of these science projects. They’re a big deal around here.
Now, if you have any questions, just ask one of our citizen scientists!
Do you want to be an original?
“They are so worried about being successful, they want to be a carbon copy instead of an original.” –From last night’s lecture by Dr. Cornel West, given to a standing room only crowd at Kimmel Arena at UNCA. Of course, Dr West was referring to young people being raised in today’s testing culture, which is so pathologically wrapped up in the achievement culture, they don’t know how to think for themselves.
Dr West is also famous for saying, “Justice is what love looks like in public.” It was a pleasure to watch someone speak the truth, and to share that moment with over 5,000 people last night. Not surprisingly, I saw several Rainbow alumni there.
~This is a re-post from November 11, 2013
