Oak Knoll’s Hope Memorial Library in the Upper School and the Bonaventura Hall Library in the Lower School offer a spectacular selection of reading and resources for students. Upper School Librarian Elinor Takenaga and Lower School Librarian Betty Castello are experts at pointing students toward age-appropriate casual reading and material that supports classroom projects. In addition to tens of thousands of books, online academic research databases, magazines, and newspapers ensure our students can turbo-charge their passion for learning and their pure enjoyment of the written word.

Just a few weeks before the close of school, Takenaga spearheaded a series of field trips to the local Summit library so that students could receive their public library card and tour the facility to investigate its resources. They discovered that many local libraries now go way beyond offering written resources that students and their families can use over the summer for recreation, college planning, passion projects, and much more. Open the doors to your local library, and you may discover some quirky and welcome surprises.

Enjoy some cozy downtime with your youngster during this Holiday Season with any of these “Jingle Book” recommendations from Lower School Librarian Betty Castello. Let them form the basis of new bedtime traditions this year and for years to come. They can also make excellent Christmas gifts or stocking stuffers for the young ones in your life. 

Technology is everywhere and has become an essential aspect of our school, home, personal, and business lives. Walk into most pre-K or kindergarten classrooms today, and you are likely to see interactive whiteboards, students utilizing iPads, robotics activities, and other tech-based learning aids and apps. By high school, students are engaging in ever more complex uses of technology to learn advanced coding, engineering, 3D modeling, and all manner of internet and artificial intelligence-based research techniques.

The proliferation of technology in education and the need to support healthy media use has prompted many schools to adopt acceptable use policies and other guidelines for supporting mental, physical, and social-emotional growth in the real world measured against the many hours students spend surfing the digital world. 

The Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Business School have joined forces to create the Digital Wellness Lab, and their “Best Practices for Digital Wellness” calls for families to mirror the work of educators by sitting down with their teens to create shared media use agreements in the home.

Fifteen years ago, a helpful blog post might have listed five ways parents can assist their children in becoming computer literate. As the wave of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine intelligence (MI) crashes over society, it is now vital that parents assist their children in becoming “reality” literate. 

One of the cunning aspects of chatbots such as ChatGPT and others from Microsoft and Google are that they return information to users in natural language. Unlike a simple Google search that returns text and links scraped from the internet, AI synthesizes millions of bits of information and seeks to “chat” with the user as a means of cultivating a relationship. Users, especially younger users, may be fooled into thinking there is a real person on the other side of the conversation. That could be costly.

With the addition of two new full-time faculty in the Upper School, the Creative Arts Department at Oak Knoll is spreading it’s wings. Music teacher Teresa Gotanco and Theater Teacher Lisa Bodollo joined the team for the 2022-2023 school year and they are collaborating with an ensemble of students to stage a particularly challenging musical, James and the Giant Peach. Here is Teresa Gotanco with some highlights including a sneak peak at the performance.

Tickets and information can be found here,

We recently posted a blog entitled, Reading Aloud to Your Pre-Kindergarten Student. Yes, research supports the notion that this act improves cognitive development, but who needs an excuse to cuddle up with a wee one during the holidays or any other time of year!

As a follow up, Lower School Librarian, Betty Castello, put together this list of some of her favorite holiday-themed book recommendations for the little elves in your life. Book descriptions are courtesy of amazon.com.

This holiday season, give your pre-kindergarten student the gift of a lifetime–give them a story a day. Whether it’s reading aloud to them at bedtime, listening to an audio book in the car, or sharing a story during bath time, research overwhelmingly supports the fact that exposing young children to aural storytelling at an early age, improves their cognitive development.

Oak Knoll School of the Holy Child in Summit, NJ, will be actively participating in Computer Science Education Week from December 5-11, 2022, with daily coding and computing activities across all grade levels. Parents and caregivers can reinforce these in-school activities with assignments at home. Here are some suggestions and some helpful web resources.

It’s time to give our loyal blog readers the edge on locating the best education technology gifts for their budding Scientists, Technologists, Engineers, Artists, and Mathematicians.

Every year, Santa’s Chief Technology Elf Bernard creates a list of recommendations for Santa. Miraculously, that list has somehow fallen into our hands every year for the past seven years. 

This year, Santa’s North Pole Server (the one Santa uses to store and manage all the millions of Christmas lists he’s sent) was attacked. About two weeks ago, an unidentified elf opened a malicious email causing all the data on this precious server to be encrypted. 

This ransomware attack put the whole Christmas operation in peril with The Clause Family and all the elves rendered incapable of checking any lists, checking them twice, and finding out who's been naughty or nice. CTE Bernard reached out to the expert tech team at Oak Knoll who were able to track down the malicious code and decrypt the data without the need for a single bitcoin in payment. As a thank you, Bernard voluntarily shared his tech recommendations (which are normally for Santa’s eyes only) with the Oak Knoll community with the caveat that we use it responsibly.

When asked if Bernard would also share the list of who’s been naughty or nice, he flatly refused. We’ll just have to assume everyone in the Oak Knoll community has been nice this year (which we think is a pretty safe bet.)

Here’s Bernard the Elf’s suggestions for best tech-related education gifts this Christmas Season across a variety of price ranges.

The start of November kicked off National Native American Heritage Month, also known as American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month. It is a time to recognize Indigenous people's history, culture, and contributions. Additionally, part of Native American Heritage Month involves reckoning with the past.

Here, we've curated a variety of resources for parents and teachers who would like to initiate conversations and learn more.