IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

In math workshop, we have been discussing the purpose of a number line and how it may help us in solving our math problems. We initially created a number line from the number from one to twenty, and it was then extended to twenty five (to help a friend answer a math problem whose answer was twenty five). The other day, we were trying to solve a problem that had a much higher answer than 25. One of our friends brought up a desire to have a number line that went higher than twenty five. Some friends wanted one that went to thirty. One wanted one up to fifty! Someone suggested that it get built up to one hundred and everyone got really excited and agreed on that. For the past couple of days, we have been creating our number line on our floor. We have been taking turns creating numbers in order on little cards and taping them to the floor in sequence. We have finally reached our goal- one hundred! We even used the number line today to figure out how many more positive points we needed for a celebration (our goal is 50, we have 43). The kids walked along the number line from 43 to 50, and counted 7 steps. Thus, we only need seven more points!

In talking about the number line, we revisited one of our math games we played at the beginning of the year, The Bunny Hop. This game has a mini number line that goes from 1 – 20, and each player rolls a dice and “hops” their bunny that many spaces untill they get to 20. The first one to 20 is the winner. After playing The Bunny Hop with partners, I decided that the kids needed to learn the real Bunny Hop dance ( you know, the one that they do at weddings and other banquet hall functions 🙂 ) I was shocked that most of the kids had never done The Bunny Hop! We sure have some great dancers.

I will certainly miss all of our friends over fall break! I hope all of our families have a wonderful and safe break. See you in two weeks!

As with all of the areas, the kids are really getting into Math Workshop.  We did not have Math Workshop earlier this week because of our recycling project work and I had many disappointed friends.  I got a lot of sad faces over it.  I can honestly say that this is one of my favorite parts of the day.  It is great to see the kids engaged in their math notebooks and working together with others as they play a math game.  Today, as the kids solved their math problem, I took a few pictures so you can see them at work!  Our math time typically goes something like this: we read the problem in our journal together and then they are sent off to work as we float around to help and assist.  After the work time we share our findings and talk about the different way people solved their problems.  Finally, we end this block of time with some type of math game.  For example, we have been talking about number lines this week so we revisited a game called “Bunny Hop” to see how a number line can be used in life. 

BreAnna is hard at work in her journal!

 

Max and Kaylee are working on their journals as they relax on the carpet.

 

Selah and Sophia are working together to solve their problems!

The kids listen to a story by one of their favorite authors: David Shannon. It was read by our librarian, Mrs. Dennis.

 We had a very exciting first adventure today!  We made our first visit to the library. 🙂  Mrs. Dennis, our school librarian read a book from one of our FAVORITE authors, David Shannon.  The kids were so excited because it was one that we had not read yet.   I can honestly say David Gets In Trouble was a hit!  We will continue going to the library weekly on Wednesdays, but by request of Mrs. Dennis the library books are going to stay at school.  The kids have many times during the day that they are able to read them and many have taken advantage of this already!

Hello hello!  This morning some of our friends continued to work on the stage.  They get so excited to build the stage.  When the small group came back into the classroom after working with Mrs. Grotjan, Joseph said, “I had so much fun building (while he was imitating him drilling).”

Tomorrow remember is picture day where the children can wear whatever they want.  Also, tomorrow night at 6pm is our second Parent Council Meeting.

"We need to measure the airplane."

Each day when the kids enter the room, they sign in to let me know they are at school and answer the daily question.Today our daily question said, “How long is our airplane? 10 feet, 20 feet, or 30 feet?”This question brought up a lot of conversation on measurement and estimation during our arrival activities. What is a good estimation? How do you know when you’ve made a good estimation? How do we learn to become good estimators? While friends were pondering these questions and engaging in conversation, I began to notice several children grab a material and begin lining it up against the side of the airplane. I asked Sascha what she was doing. “We’re using the inch worms!” she exclaimed. “Why?” I asked. Journey answered for her friend, “We need to measure the airplane.” The two friends were using one of our math workshop tools, inchworms, which are little worms that are one inch exactly. Several other children noticed what the girls were doing and became interested.

Messi assists with the inchworm measurement.

Ruth explains why the inchworms should stop.

 

The friends agreed that Ruth was right, we could stop. “So now what?” Lucas asked. We decided next that we needed to count the inch worms to see how many inches the plane was across. Cameron and Carriea worked together to count. Cameron put his finger on each worm as Carriea said what number worm it was. As they got higher and higher, into the hundreds, more friends became excited and joined in the counting.

Cameron carefully marks the worms counted with his finger.

 

 The excitement grew as we counted more nad more worms. “Two hundred eighty, two hundred eighty-one, two hundred eighty-two, two hundred eighty-three!!!” The kids all cheered. 

So excited to count!

 

 “Wait a second! That number is not part of our daily question!” Lucas brought up a good point. Our class was stuck. How could we have counted two hundred eighty-three inches and not have that be one of the three choices on the daily question. Monica suggested, “It’s not in feet!”We then discussed what exactly a foot was and that there were twelve inches in a foot. A friend suggested we break up the inch worms in groups of twelve, to show how many feet. The kids were so paitient as we took turns breaking up the two hundred eighty-three inch worms into little groups and neatly placed them on the floor. After all groups were created, we counted them together. We counted twenty-three groups of eleven and a group of ten, so our airplane is approximately twenty-four feet long! WOW!

Two hundred eighty-three inches. WOW!

 

 

 

 

 

Tags: arithmetic, capable, curious, motivation, project, thinking