Alpine Valley School

Halloween at Alpine Valley School 🎃

This year we celebrated Halloween on Friday, October 30th with a two-part event, and it was a wonderful success.

During the school day, students and staff members decorated Halloween cookies, played a game of pumpkin bowling (you roll a pumpkin at six plastic 2-liter bottles as though they were bowling pins, and it is exactly as fun as it sounds), played the Werewolf Game (a social deduction game that got pretty intense), and decorated Halloween buckets to use for trick or treating later in the day.

Then when the end of the school day rolled around, parents, siblings, and friends joined in the fun. We had music and dancing in the Theater, a costume parade, and then trick or treating around the building. That last one was new this year, and it was a big hit. Students (and friends) walked around the outside of the building and trick or treated at each exterior door, where a staff member handed out candy along with a small riddle or challenge. At one door you rolled a d20, and a natural 20 got you extra candy. Everyone seemed to love it, and it's already on the list for next year.

Families also brought all kinds of delicious treats for our dessert potluck, and there was a spaghetti treasure hunt where you felt around blind in a bowl of cooked spaghetti (with some extras thrown in) and tried to name as many of the hidden items as you could. Potion bottle, plastic spider, you get the idea.

We asked the students what their favorite parts were, and the answers came back fast: the costume parade, the dessert potluck, pumpkin bowling, and, by a wide margin, trick or treating.

One more thing worth saying: the students picked every one of these activities themselves, and students and staff members took the lead on planning and running them, from the first brainstorm to the last bowl of candy. Somewhere around 65 people came through the building over the course of the afternoon, and these activities kept all of us busy until it was time to clean up and call it another successful community event.

We are so grateful to everyone who contributed by bringing a dessert, donating candy, hosting a door, coming in costume, attending the party, and much, much more. It was a wonderful success and we are already dreaming up plans for next year's shindig!

✈️ Field trip day at Wings Over the Rockies!

Today a group of Alpine Valley Schoolstudents headed over to Wings Over the Rockies Air & Space Museum for a self-guided tour, and we had a wonderful time. We explored the hangar together, checked out helicopters and jets, and read up on the stories behind them.

The highlight for a lot of us was getting to see the B-1A Lancer bomber up close. It’s even more impressive in person!

A big thank you to Wings Over the Rockies Air & Space Museum for having us, and to our chaperones and volunteer drivers for making the day happen. 🧡

This week at Alpine Valley School 🎃

Another fun, full week in the books! Here's a peek at what we've been up to:

The kitchen was busy all week with a few different cooking projects (including a whole spread of Halloween cupcakes), and Gastronomy Corp cooked up a big pot of potato soup for their weekly cooking class - cozy, delicious, and perfect for these chilly fall days.

Play practice is going swimmingly. The cast is up on stage running scenes and getting more confident every single week.

A group of students headed to the music store to look at renting some instruments, so there may be some new music coming out of the building soon (consider yourselves warned).

Some of our students sat down for video interviews for an upcoming fundraising video, and they did an amazing job. We can't wait to share it with you!

Anatomy & Physiology class kept rolling, and in between there were cardboard building projects, a pegboard design challenge, face painting, tumbling on the mats, plenty of pool, and a lot of tag out in the sunshine.

And today we're celebrating Halloween at school, with fun activities happening all day long. Happy Halloween from all of us at Alpine Valley School! 👻

This week at AVS 🫧

What a week! A few highlights:

🎭 A field trip to see The Tempest at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts
🗓️ Our monthly Events & Excursions meeting, where students plan the upcoming trips and parties
🎃 Lots (and lots) of work on the activities and games for our Halloween party
🫧 A student brought in a homemade, absolutely gigantic bubble wand, and the whole community spent the week chasing bubbles bigger than they are
🚽 An exciting sewer-related adventure that was thankfully resolved quickly and without being too terribly expensive (lesson learned: please don’t flush paper towels!)

Plus all of our regular stuff: Dungeons & Dragons, time with our artist-in-residence, watercolors and the pottery wheel, rehearsals for our student play, games of tag in the sunshine, and a couple of kids who decided the best use of the sandbox was burying themselves in it. These everyday moments together are what make our school what it is, and we wouldn’t trade them for anything.

One of our staff members penned this recent blog post for Sudbury International - check it out!

Children Are Born Knowing How to Learn. Then We Send Them to School.

This week at Alpine Valley School 🍂

It was a short week due to the holiday on Monday, but we made good use of it!

🎃 We held a meeting to plan activities for our Halloween party on Friday, October 30th. We'll announce the activities soon! If your family plans to join us, please RSVP here: https://avshalloween2026.rsvpify.com/

✏️ We played so many games of Hangman. So. Many.

🥫 A student built a sculpture out of hot glue and empty Monster cans. (Nobody here drank them, we promise! The cans were collected from family members.)

🥧 A student baked a pumpkin pie and was generous enough to share it with everyone.

🫀 Dr. Sealander came back for another anatomy & physiology lesson with students.

🍲 Gastronomy Corporation planned, shopped for, and cooked potato soup and banana bread blondies for their weekly cooking class.

🎓 Our Diploma Committee held its annual meeting and celebrated our graduating student as he begins his diploma process! He'll work through it at his own pace for the rest of the school year, and it all wraps up with a graduation ceremony in May. We're so proud of him!

🧊 Our student-designed FREE-zing shirts featuring Jonah Bobo the yeti are on sale now, and every shirt sold supports tuition assistance. The first batch closes Monday, October 19th, so grab yours here: https://www.bonfire.com/free-zing-with-jonah-bobo/

This week at Alpine Valley School 🍂

We welcomed two new students to our community this week, and one of them didn’t wait long to make their mark. By midweek there was a brand-new D&D campaign up and running, because they wanted one and went and made it happen. It’s amazing how quickly kids dive into their interests when the day is theirs to shape.

Meanwhile, around the building:

🍋 Gastronomy Corporation cooked up lemon sorbet and Halloween muddy buddies in their weekly cooking class.

🎭 The play cast started blocking for Twister on Tuesday, so the scripts are turning into real movement on stage. Very exciting stuff.

🧩 One student designed his own puzzle, made copies, and handed them out so the rest of us could noodle around with it too.

🫀 Dr. Sealander, a member of our community, came back to continue a series of anatomy and physiology discussions.

🐈 We took a field trip to Denver Cat Company, a cat cafe, where we spent time with some very friendly (and very wonderful) kittens. More field trips are coming up! See what’s next at www.alpinevalleyschool.com/events

🎨 A new set of face paints showed up, and painting was a big deal all week long.

✉️ We found out a sister school runs a pen pal program, and lots of students jumped right in, writing letters to new friends they haven’t met yet. Who says letter writing is a lost art?

🎃 Katy, one of our staff members, spent the week helping a student design and build their own Halloween costume. She brought the technical know-how (and a good share of the hard labor), and an amazing Oogie Boogie took shape right before our eyes. The idea was the student’s, and Katy helped make it real. That’s a pretty good picture of what staff members do here.

Lots of different weeks happened under one roof, and each kid chose their own.

The t-shirt contest results are in, and this year's winner is FREE-zing! 🥶

Billy drew Jonah Bobo, the yeti who has become our unofficial mascot, and now you can wear him. Tees, long sleeves, crewnecks, and hoodies are available in adult and youth sizes.

Every purchase supports our tuition assistance fund, which helps more families choose a self-directed education for their kids. You can also add a donation at checkout.

Order by October 19 to be part of the first printing: https://www.bonfire.com/free-zing-with-jonah-bobo/

Another week at Alpine Valley School is in the books, and it was a good one! ☀️

🪅 A student made a piñata from scratch, and we all took turns giving it a good smash.
🔧 Someone donated an old DVD player, and our tinkerers had it down to screws and circuit boards in no time.
📖 A cozy group settled in together for a story.
👕 Everyone who wanted a say cast a vote in our t-shirt design contest. Winner announced early next week!
🎤 A student secured a donation of a big speaker for the theater, and the karaoke started that very same day.
🎭 Work on the school play kept rolling along.
🧋 Gastronomy Corporation whipped up boba tea and mac and cheese in their weekly cooking class.

One person brings something to share, and the whole community gets to enjoy it. That's a pretty typical week around here. 💛