IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Today, we spoke about respect and what we needed to do in class in order to give and receive respect.  The children came up with some ideas:

1.  Keep our hands and body to ourselves.

2.  Listen when Mrs. Bucher or another friend is talking.

3.  Use nice words.

We will be making a class book on respect. We also will have a respect jar, and as I see friends respecting each other or myself, I will put a marble in.  When we get a full jar, we will go to the big playground!  I think the children will LOVE that!!

Makayla, Mekhi, and Heaven rolling the dice and throwing the matching number of bean bags in the basket!

Jonah, Isaac, and Jason posing for a picture during free choice!

Today we had a great start to week two!  As a class, we talked about what we should be doing in our room.  It was a wonderful to hear all of the kids share their ideas on how we can work together.  Here is what we came up with:

1. Raise your hand

2. Listen when other friends are talking

3. Follow directions

4. Be kind to your friends

5. Keep your body to yourself

Over the next few days we will be talking about each one of these.  In addition, we will be writing class books that we can read over and over again to help us!  It is so great to see the kids take ownership over the room!

Our first week of school went by so fast!  I hope that your children came home excited to tell you all the various things we did from the read alouds to the three different workshops to free choice!  We focused a lot of the week on procedures and getting to know each other.  Next week we will continue to work on procedures while at school, and I hope to begin conferencing with each child while doing Reader’s and Writer’s Workshop.

On Monday, I will be sending home one notebook which will be our journal to write back and forth during the year.  I will begin the journal with just letting you all know how your child is doing in school so far.  Then, you are more than welcome to write back as often or not often as you would like.   I hope that this is something that you will enjoy throughout the year!

Mrs. Bucher 🙂

Malachi showing me his flower and sun he drew during one of the literacy stations!

Emily and Geneva preparing for their bubblegum store!

Sydney and Cha'kyra's house they built during free choice!

We have discovered that our class has a great interest in creating and flying our own airplanes. After watching the children create all week, I decided that we would take this interest and pair it together with our interest in length and measurement. Today during Math Workshop, one of our friends, Hutton, showed the entire class how to make a paper airplane. We worked together to help friends that were struggling and made sure that each child had an airplane. Then we decorated and personalized our airplanes so we knew which one belonged to us. We then decided to take turns flying our airplane to see which could go the farthest. We started with a question, “How will we know which is farthest?” Some ideas were to measure in miles, floor tiles, and with kids. McKinley brought up inches. We then took a look at a 6 inch ruler. Regan said, “That’s not big enough silly!” So we pulled out a 12 inch ruler. We decided it was still not going to be big enough to measure our flights. Regan then found the large, 60 inch measuring tape in my basket. The class decided it would be sufficient to get us started. We sat as a class and counted down a takeoff for each child (“One, Two THREEEE!!!”) and watched the planes soar. Some of the planes made it past 60 inches. We then had to problem solve as to how to measure past our measuring tape by adding another large ruler. The kids wrote their distances on a big chart and we discussed the results afterwards. Make sure to take a look at your child’s airplane in thier take home folder this weekend. They did a great job with this activity!

"My airplane is pink. Isn't it nice?" - Messi

Cameron and Dylan preparing their airplanes for flight.