IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Yesterday, the kids were excited to jump right back into creating our large, 24 foot airplane. Many friends helped one another construct walls for the plane’s fuselage, the body, out of cardboard and taped them together. We then moved to covering the remaining exposed roof of the plane on the cockpit and the tail. Lucas, Hutton, Monica, and Ruth worked together to make sure that before they fixed it on the top, the roof piece was centered and visually appealing. They enjoyed taking turns standing back and letting friends know whether to move the piece more to the left, more to the right, towards Mrs. Argus, and so on.  Once we had the pieces covering the cockpit and tail, Hutton said, “So now what?” Messi heard our conversation and excitedly shouted, “Our airplane needs wings!”

Friends measure the length of the box.

 More children joined us as we started our discussion on wings. Would they be small or large? Would they need to stand out straight from the plane or should they hang down? Where on the plane would we place the wings?   Ruth suggested we look at some of the different sizes of collected boxes in our room. After looking at different shapes and sizes, we decided on two large boxes, because we wanted large wings. I asked, “How do we know which is longer?” Monica suggested we measure them on the class number line on the floor. Messi and Hutton carried the first box over to the number line. Ruth explained that the box needed to start by where it said 1 so we knew how long the box was. After measuring both large boxes in this way, we discovered that they were both exactly the same size! We decided on using the nicer looking one that had less wear and tear.  Lucas came up with the idea to draw where the adult could cut out for the wings. He carefully drew the wing with a pencil, and then traced it over with a black marker. After the wing was cut out, we tested to see how it looked on the plane. The kids were pleased, and so was I! A great fit. Tomorrow, we will see if we can creat a symmetrical wing to match our first.

Very carefully drawing where the wing should be cut out.

Tags: arithmetic, capable, project

I hope you all had a wonderful break!  It was so great to get back to school and see everyone today!  The children were so engaged and excited to be back at school which was wonderful to see.  I could not believe how hard the children were working, listening, and working collaboratively!

Today, we began some new things in the room-the message center and the finger puppet stage.  Our friends were so excited to get started writing messages to each other and putting them in their friends’ mailboxes.  The finger puppet stage was also a hit today.  There were some imaginative puppet shows going on including Gerald and Piggie from Mo Willem’s Gerald and Piggie books.

I put reminders in the mailboxes today, but remember we are going to Clowes on Wednesday and the puppet show at Peewinkle’s Puppet Studio on Saturday, if you choose.

If you are feeling like donating anything to our class, we are in need of snacks for our room, empty egg cartons, and construction paper…

A puppet show in the making!

Friends busy writing messages to each other!

Our mailboxes with some messages already in them!

Kristien & Teramondis are reading from their book bags with Mr. Ward.

It was a very exciting day back!   We started the day knowing that there would be a surprise in Reader’s Workshop.  (I had put this in our morning message so there was excitement from 9:00 on.)  As we are now into the swing of things, the kids are reading books that are high interest AND books that are at their level.  To make sure each child gets what they need we have introduced the idea of book bags into Reader’s Workshop.  It was the big surprise of the morning!  The kids were very excited as each one of them got a gallon ziploc bag full of books that were just for them.  How special is that?!  The bags have about 6 books in them and the books will be changed weekly.  In addition, the bags will actually change into canvas bags in a few weeks.  The kids are going to have the opportunity to decorate a piece of fabric and we will then sew it on their bags to personalize them.  We will start this tomorrow. 

Kaylee and David picked Cover All as their math game!

 

BreAnna and Max picked Go Forward, Move Back as their math game!

As if one surprise is not enough, we had another in Math Workshop!  Over the past few weeks we have been playing different math games to work on our number sense.  Well today instead of me picking the game, the kids had an option of 5 different ones we have played in the past!  They were so excited to choose their own I got CHEERS when they found out what was going to happen.

Miss Schmidt and Carriea read together.

The friends of room 104 were greeted by many exciting changes after their fall break and were eager and excited to get back to work today! They noticed some additions to our room (some hanging tree branches, lots of new plants, a changed word wall, a new mail center!) as well as the addition of a new teacher- Miss Deanna Schmidt! Miss Schmidt will be our student teacher from now untill the end of the school year. We are so lucky to have this wonderful extra hand from Butler to learn and grow with us throughout the rest of the year. I was impressed but not suprised with how welcoming and helpful the kids were to Miss Schmidt as she acclimated to our room today. She must feel so lucky to get to work with this wonderful group of children- I know I am.

still in progress. 🙂  We got some great head way with our puppet stage this week, but we are still not finished with it.  The Clowes trip I think will be a perfect time for us to go because we will be finishing up our stage that week, and we will be able to begin to focus on what to prepare besides the stage for our shows.  The children have really enjoyed building and using tools…they have been so responsible and safe with the tools as well so that has been nice to see that they have learned tool safety!

Today, some of our friends became intrigued by some numbers that were down in Mrs. Argus’ class.  The kiddos saw the numbers 1-100 taped down on her floor.  When the two children came back to our room, they told us what they saw and then the children wanted to do that too, but we talked about maybe making our numbers from the door to our math notebooks!  First we guessed how many number cards we would have to make to reach from our door to the math notebooks in the center of the room.  Shaniyia  and Emily guessed 100.  Madeline P. guessed 36.  DeOnna guessed 1200.  It was amazing to see how engaged the children were during this time of making our numbers.  They were taking turns, writing the numbers themselves, and all I did was provide tape for them!  We got to 100, but we are not to the math notebooks yet….we will see how many more it will take to get there!

I hope you all have a wonderful Fall Break, and we will see you in a couple of weeks!

Jamari working on our number line on the floor!

Mekhi, Madeline, and Malachi looking at the Studio table to use that as a guide for our puppet stage. How clever!

Geneva assisting Oliver while he drilled a screw into the side of the stage.