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Preventing Erosion in STEAM

November 28, 2018
Students in second grade have been developing the idea that water is a powerful force that reshapes the earth’s surface. We’ve compared multiple solutions for preventing erosion. We discussed the wildfires in California, and viewed the devastation of the land when the trees are all gone.  In this activity, they designed and test ways to keep water from washing away a hill modeled out of cornmeal.  
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CT Parrot Club Visits 7th Grade Science

November 15, 2018

As part of the seventh grade “Introductory Ornithology” unit in Life Science, Ginny August of The Parrot Club of CT brought along some of her winged friends!

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8th Graders Took in the Attractions in D.C.

November 15, 2018

8th graders took the annual trip to Washington D.C. recently and took in all of the sights and sounds the city has to offer.  They toured the Capitol Building, Lincoln Memorial, and much more.  The highlight was a Renbrook School wreather being placed on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

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Wesleyan Students Visit Playscape Designers

November 15, 2018

Design and Engineering students visited Renbrook to meet with the playscape design representatives from the lower school. The Wesleyan students brought some introductory designs to show the Renbrook team as they progress in the prototype creation of a playscape designed for children of all ages and abilities.

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Thinking Outside the Box

November 13, 2018

For the past five years, students in Kindergarten through grade five here at Renbrook School have participated in the Global Cardboard Challenge inspired by Nirvan Mullick’s film, Caine’s Arcade. Each year, the children, divide into teams and are given the task of designing and building something mostly out of cardboard. They’ve created arcade games, a metropolis, and playgrounds for a guinea pig.

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Renbrook Honors Our Veterans

November 13, 2018

Renbrook upper school students led a Veteran’s Day assembly with an appearance from Abraham Lincoln (aka Mr. Wright). Renbrook alum Tori Hooker ’02 visited campus and share about her active duty in the U.S. Navy where she has been a corpsman (combat medic) for over 11 years and have been stationed all over the East coast. She spent three years working in the emergency room at the naval hospital in Virginia and three years on a guided missile destroyer doing anti-piracy operations. She moved back to Connecticut to go to school and see her family and spent four years as a reservist supporting the navy funeral honors program in New England. She was recently called back to active duty to run a medical mobilization department in a reservist support center in Connecticut. Tori says that the best part of what she does is getting to visit over 23 countries and swim in the middle of four different oceans. 

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Renbrook School Holds Alumni Event

November 6, 2018
Renbrook School held its annual Alumni Night on November 3. The evening started with a reunion reception followed by the 2018 Renbrook School Distinguished Alumni Award ceremony. This year’s Distinguished Alumni award recipients were Mally Cox-Chapman ’66 P’99 ’02 and James W. Cox-Chapman, M.D. ’66 P’99 ’02, both of Hartford.

Following the award ceremony, alumni of the Class of 1993 held a beautiful tribute in memory of their classmate Peter Wertheim ’93 of New York, NY.

Alumni finished out the evening with a campus crawl that featured a different culinary course, a current curriculum demonstration, and memorabilia from milestone reunion classes in different locations around campus. Highlights included the Math Center, the World Languages program, and a STEAM design challenge complete with Spheros!
 

Mally Cox-Chapman is the founder of Benefactory Philanthropic Advisors, a consulting firm that provides strategic advice to high-net-worth families and their foundations. Mally graduated from The Ethel Walker School and earned her BA cum laude~in political science from Yale University, in its first class of women. She was a writer-in-residence at Germantown Friends School for ten years, and has written three books.

James Cox-Chapman currently serves as a director of the Mclean Foundation, the Brainard Fund of the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, and the Island Commons, an assisted living facility in Maine. James graduated from Philips Academy Andover, Williams College, and Temple University Medical School. In 1997, with two other colleagues, Jim founded ProHealth Physicians, a large, statewide medical group.

 

 
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Renbrook School Holds Alumni Career Day

November 6, 2018

Renbrook School in West Hartford held its 3rd Annual Career Day with Renbrook alums talking about their various career this past Friday, November 2.

This program is for 7th- and 8th-grade students and is designed to give them an opportunity to learn about some potential careers/career fields from former Renbrook students who now work in those fields, to show them the often curvy road through life to a career/careers, and to instill a sense of being part of a community much bigger than their classmates and teachers. 

    This year four alumni were excited to return to Renbrook and to speak with students about their Renbrook memories, their career paths, and their successes and failures. Alumni guest speakers were Sophie Cottrell ’82 – SVP of Communications at Hatchette Book Group,
    Max Sinsteden ’02 – Cofounder and Director at Olasky & Sinsteden, Ali Lazowksi ’06 – Founder and CEO of Bare Life and recent 40 over 30 award winner, and Friya Bankwalla ’08 – Digital Publicity Assistant at Penguin Young Readers.

     
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    Renbrook Students Participate in HMF Fit Kids Run

    November 6, 2018
     29 4th and 5th grade students from Renbrook School in West Hartford participated in the FitKids Run sponsored by the Hartford Marathon Foundation (HMF) at Rentschler Field in East Hartford. HMF FitKids runs offer distances between 50 yards for the smallest children up to 1-mile races for older kids. For over 10 years, Renbrook students have training for runs all over Connecticut with their running club called Road Runners.
    The HMF FitKids In School, operated by the Hartford Marathon Foundation, is designed to encourage a healthy, active lifestyle in middle school students grades 4th thru 8th. Following their final mile, students explore the World of Fitness, a fitness themed expo presented by the YMCA of Greater Hartford.
     
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    Senator Chris Murphy Visits Renbrook

    October 31, 2018

    Senator Chris Murphy came to visit our grade 5-8 students to talk about his life in legislative office and to answer a few questions form our eighth grade hosts.  Thank you for visiting Mr. Murphy!

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    Wesleyan Students to Build Renbrook Student-Designed Playscape

    October 25, 2018

    How might Renbrook students create a playscape that children of all ages and abilities would enjoy? K-5 students at Renbrook School worked on just that and Wesleyan University Design & Engineering students selected a Renbrook prototype to build to scale! 

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    Third Grade Oregon Trail Hike

    October 19, 2018

    Third grade set out for the “Oregon Trail” through the Renbrook hiking trails! Students worked together to build wagons in teams and traversed rough terrain with their wagons, making important decisions as a group along the way! 

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    JK visits Bushy Hill Farms

    October 12, 2018

    Apples and cider & donuts…oh my! A good time was had by JKDS at Bushy Hill Orchards in Granby,CT!

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    Lower School Students Are Dreaming BIG!

    October 12, 2018
    The Cardboard Challenge is in full swing in grades K-5. This year we’re creating cardboard playscapes designed for children of all ages and abilities. Students in grades K-5 traveled to Jonathan’s Dream Playground on the campus of the Mandell Jewish Community Center in West Hartford.http://www.jonathansdream.org/. They got to experience firsthand a playground that was designed for children of all ages and abilities.
     
    After returning to campus students Skyped with a playscape designer from CedarWorks, designers of environmentally responsible products in the world for active play, in Rockport, Maine. The designer answered students’ questions and explained the design process from concept to production.
     
    Next stop; Wesleyan University! A playscape design team from Renbrook will be chosen to bring their cardboard prototype to IDEA170 Introduction to Design and Engineering class at Wesleyan. The team will pitch their playscape idea to members of his class. If they choose this project, the Wesleyan students will then build it to scale.
     
    Come see the Cardboard Challenge Showcase on Wednesday, October 24 in Stedman Auditorium anytime between 2:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. TThe playscape creations will be on full display as well as artifacts from the Cardboard Challenge journey!

     
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    JK Story Explorers Program

    October 8, 2018

    For the JK Story Explorers Program~we will be reading a fun story followed by a hands-on extension activity. Whether our intrepid~explorers find themselves hiking along Renbrook’s extensive trail system, collaborating on an abstract painting, or dramatizing their own fairy tale, this program is both enriching and just plain fun! Our hike was our activity following the story “Henry the Explorer”. Henry makes and then plants flags along the path he takes on his exploration, in order that he may easily find his way back home afterward. Renbrook’s Story Explorers made and planted flags along their path on Renbrook’s red trail.

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    Why Project Based Learning?

    October 2, 2018

    Can you recall the projects you completed as a child in your school? Perhaps you made an instrument for music class, or a diorama for English class, or composed an oral presentation about a U.S. President. While assignments like these can be engaging, you probably don’t remember the specifics of what you learned, and there’s a good reason why. These types of projects only touched the surface of learning because they were not presented as a means to solving an authentic problem, which we now know is one of the keys to making learning memorable and relevant.

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    Landforms in STEAM

    September 27, 2018

    Second graders learned about landforms by making their own! Students got to put different materials on their created landforms to see how it flows in Lower School STEAM.

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    Exhale to the count of five….

    September 27, 2018

    Mrs. Cooper shows our 2nd graders the importance of our breath and how it calms us down and keeps us focused. Did you know that if we were to open your lungs flat it would cover the size of a tennis court? 

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    With Liberty and Justice For All

    September 27, 2018

    8th graders got a lesson in flag folding today. Did you know that each of the 13 folds has specific symbolism?

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    How to Fold the Flag

    September 27, 2018

    8th graders got a lesson in flag folding today. Did you know that each of the 13 folds has specific symbolism?

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