by Admin | Apr 26, 2017 | Blogs
Come celebrate the return of the faeries with us this May Day from 10:30am to 12:00pm in the Outdoor Classroom on Haywood Road!
We will celebrate the magic of spring by dancing together, wrapping the May Pole, eating berries-n-cream, blowing bubblles, bursting with song, and reveling in our bright costumes. We invite you to come dressed up in fairy, magical, and animal inspired outfits. We can’t wait to see you sparkle! If you feel inspired to, we also welcome you to bring small gifts to place in the nooks of nature for the faeries and their houses.
Beltane, or May Day, lies directly opposite Halloween in the solar calendar. Both mark the point between the preceeding equinox and the following solstice. The holidays mirror each other as opportunities both to interact with magic beings, wether ghostly ancestors or trickster faeries, as well as to mark a major shift in our relationshiop to the sun, wether we’re moving towards the shadows or turning towards the warmth of light.
Thank you for coming to celebrate this bright, flowering, new beginning of springtime with us! This is one of our favorite holidays we celebrate and we cant wait to share it with you. Check out our pictures from years previous to get a sense of the festive magic involved ♥.
by Admin | Apr 25, 2017 | Blogs
Quan Yin is a Buddhist deity of compassion. Her spiritual archetype, however, exists across many different religions and cultures. Mother Mary within Christianity and Sophia within Gnosticism, for example, represent similiar all-loving and all-merficul qualities. Many beautiful art pieces, theater skits, short stories and community projects were born out of Domain Day. This one, however, stands out as a unique integration of the creative and spiritual domains beautifying and uplifting our campus.
The Spiritual Domain Group designed and built this shrine with Quan Yin as its center piece. She had long stood by the water-feature in the outdoor classroom, before Rainbow teachers and Spiritual Domain Group leaders, Mark Hanf and Justin Pilla, spotted her and felt her to be the perfect point of inspiration from which to build a shrine. After having smudged the area with sage, the dozen students began by placing their own personal artifacts within the center of an imaginary circle. Students then took turns placing the large rocks in a measured and intentional formation to mark the boundary of the shrine. Max had been gathering these large obelisk- and sphere-shaped stones over the course of several visits to the same enchanted forrest creek. The mindfulness with which every piece of this altar was put together cast a spell of wonder over the young spiritualists. In between building the shrine, they picked up instruments from a blanket lined with shakers and hand drums to accompany the ceremony with music.
In its second year as an ‘annual Rainbow celebration’ Domain Day has received extremely positive feedback from students and teachers alike. Within a small multi-age group, students get to spend a whole day focusing on a domain they feel passionate about. They can choose between the physical, natural, social, emotional, creative, mental, and spiritual domains. This intentional time spent with teachers who have also been called to that particular domain gives students the opportunity to embody that domain more fully. And because each domain is connected, and linked to the greater whole, a student’s comfort in one domain inherently empowers their understanding of the others. In this domain group’s case, each student was able to embody the spiritual domain’s cornerstones of ritual, world religions, contemplation, and communion with the natural world, while simultaneously working through the challenges and gifts of the creative, social, and natural domains.
Thank you, Spiritual Domain Group, for leaving behind this radiant evidence of your connection to spirit. You have altered our space and given us a sanctuary at which to breath and center. We invite all who stop by our campus to visit Quan Yin, and if inspired, to leave her a token of gratitude.
by Admin | Apr 25, 2017 | Blogs
Congratulations to Rainbow students Cady in second grade, and Isabella and Kafira in fifth grade! Earlier this year these young artists submitted poems and paintings to River Link‘s ‘Voices of the River Art and Poetry Contest’. And then just a few days ago, on Saturday morning, they were honored with their awards at RiverLink’s Earth Day Kids Festival! As first place winners, their art stood out to the local artists acting as judges for its design, composition, and originality. This year the PreK through 12th grade students who submitted their art were invited to make art in answer to the question, how are you connected to your watershed? Thank you so much to River Link for your support in connecting our love of the Earth with our passion of the arts.
by Admin | Apr 18, 2017 | Blogs
Rainbow Community School has teamed up with The Vanishing Wheelchair to bring magic to Asheville on April 28 and 29!
Magic is all around us. At Rainbow magic is kept alive everyday through daily centerings, ceremonies, story-telling, and the spectacular wonder of learning. Rainbow teachers use many names for magic. Sometimes magic is the love shared between classmates, sometimes magic is watching the transformation of your citizen-science tree on campus, and sometimes magic is the patterns made by prime numbers on your math sheet.
The weekend after next we have the opportunity to learn from the people who have honed the craft of stage and street magic. The magic of illusion is one of the oldest performing arts in human history. We have been gathering around magicians, entranced by the hint of the supernatural, for hundreds of years. We invite you step back into the world of make-believe, while supporting Rainbow and The Vanishing Wheelchair in the process. Buy your tickets today for this weekend extravaganza of not only magic shows, but magic workshops too!
“Magical Moments of Asheville” is a two day magic festival beginning at 7 p.m. on Friday with The Vanishing Wheelchair’s “Magic, Mirth & Meaning” show and continuing all day Saturday with workshops on magic and juggling, a talk from Appalachian Fairy Folk School, a Kids Magic Show at 3 p.m., and a closing show at 8 p.m. highlighting a variety of Asheville performers.
Show tickets ($10 for adults, $5 for kids) can be purchased in the RCS office, at Magic Central magic shop at 175 Weaverville Highway, or online at http://www.vanishingwheelchair.org/the-rainbow-community-school-is-raising-money-by-magic/.
All events will be held at the Rainbow Community Center, 60 State Street. This event is a fundraiser for RCS and The Vanishing Wheelchair. Rainbow is a preschool through 8th grade alternative school located in the heart of West Asheville determined to share the Rainbow Seven Domains holistic education approach with teachers and students around the world. The Vanishing Wheelchair, Inc. is a 501 (c)(3) non-profit public charity dedicated to helping people with disabilities find their passion and meaning through the arts.
***FESTIVAL SCHEDULE***
Friday, April 28, 2017:
7 – 8:30 p.m. “Magic, Mirth and Meaning”:
$10 Adult, $5 Child
A family-friendly show with a meaning presented by members of The Vanishing Wheelchair, Inc., featuring magic, juggling, story telling, and singing. www.VanishingWheelchair.org
Saturday, April 29, 2017:
10 – 10: 45 a.m. Principles of Magic Workshop:
$10 Adult, $5 Child
Wendal Wandell helps you become a magician by learning tricks from the seven basic principles of magic (limit: 20 people). www.MagicWandell.com
11 – 11: 45 a.m. Juggling Gestures Workshop:
$10 Adult, $5 Child
Wendal Wandell demonstrates juggling techniques for the beginner with fun interactive practice (limit: 30 people). www.MagicWandell.com
1 – 1: 45 p.m. Appalachian Faeire Folk School:
$10 Adult, $5 Child
Storyteller Vixi Jil weaves together original and ancient faerie tales, enchanted walkabouts and personal accounts to help guide folks into explorations of discovery in the etheric realms (limit: 30 people).
www.VixiJil.com
3 – 4:00 p.m. WNC Magic Club Kid’s Show:
$10 Adult, $5 Child
A magic show presented by members of the Western North Carolina Magic Club for kids of all ages! www.WNCMagic.com
5 – 5: 45 a.m. Balloon Twisting Workshop:
$20 General, $5 Share
Marcie the Balloon Fairy teaches the basics of balloon twisting creations. Workshop includes professional kit Qualatex balloons, pump, and instructional DVD. Families wishing to share a kit just pay $20 for the kit and $5 each additional person for the workshop (limit: 30 people). www.Facebook.com/MarcieTheBalloonFairy
8 – 9:30 p.m. Magical Moments of Asheville Show:
$10 Adult, $5 Child
The Grand Finale, family-friendly show, featuring local talents of the Carolinas including comedian and magic shop owner Ricky D. Boone, magician and theatrical entertainer Wendal Wandell, cardician and magician Bobbini, the amazing magic of Wayne Anderson, story teller Vixi Jil, Forty Fingers and a Missing Tooth with jugglers Keith Campbell and Walter Beals, and famed WLOS’s Tales from the Red Rocker, Storylady Gwenda LedBetter.
www.VanishingWheelchair.org
by Admin | Apr 11, 2017 | Blogs
Australian children’s book author and comedy writer, Andy Griffiths, took Rainbow first through fifth graders by storm this morning. His childlike imagination coupled with his hilarious kid-oriented sense of humor brought the Rainbow auditorium to thunderous laughter. Throughout his presentation about his journey as a writer, comedian, and story-teller, Andy never missed an opportunity to engage our students’ imaginations. In preparation for his visit, Rainbow students drew upon their creativity to design the treehouse of their dreams, taking inspiration from Andy’s wildly popular Treehouse series. One of the treehouses in his series has “a bowling alley, a see-through swimming pool, a tank full of man-eating sharks, an underground laboratory, a vegetable vaporizer, and a marshmallow machine that shoots marshmallows into your mouths when it detects that you are hungry”. It is with this delightful absurdity, that Andy Griffiths and illustrator Terry Denton, have captured the attention of young readers around the world. Our young readers were smitten and eagerly lined up to get their books and bookmarks signed. If you’re looking for more Treehouse books we suggest you buy them from our local children’s bookstore, Spellbound Children’s Bookshop, who helped organize Andy’s visit to Rainbow. Thank you to Andy and his team for making this morning exceptionally hilarious, enlivening, and inspiring for us and our students.
