IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Hello hello!  So, today my question for the class was what color do we want to paint the puppet stage.  They had a choice between black, blue, and white.  White did not have any votes, black had some, but blue was the winner.  Tomorrow, Jett’s mother will be in to help the children paint the stage blue.  Then we are on to make curtains and backdrops for the shows.

It was so fun today because I introduced what “…” was to the class.  Most of the children when I asked them what it was said, “PERIOD!”  Then, after I told them what it was many of the children were finding elipses around our room.  They were so excited that they now know what it is called!

Heaven sanding the stage getting it ready to paint.

Oliver working on the three sheeter for The Runaway Pancake

Our vote today for which color to paint the stage

This week, we have been exploring the world of mathematics with the help of pumpkins! On Monday, I brought in four pumpkins. In the morning, students had opportunities to do observational drawings of our pumpkins. In the afternoon, we used them to explore the concept of estimation. I had each student estimate which pumpkin they thought would weigh the most. Then, after weighing all of our pumpkins, they were able to assess whether or not their estimation was correct. Next, they estimated how many pumpkin seeds were in the our pumpkins. We spent the rest of the day removing the contents of our pumpkins, which was ooey-gooey fun!

Then, on Tuesday, we used our different counting strategies to count our pumpkin seeds. We have been talking about counting by  1s, 5s, and 10s. After a class discussion, we decided that when counting a large number of objects, grouping them by 10 and counting by 10s would be the most efficient way to do that (ask your child what “efficient” means:). We then split up into groups, grouped our pumpkin seeds, and counted them!

Jaymi and Jermaine work to remove all of the "pumpkin guts" from their pumpkin.

Jamaria, Chloe, Madison, and Larry group their pumpkin seeds into groups of 10 to help count them!

David and Max are busy in our message center writing away!

Our kids have been writing up a storm!  This week I introduced the message center to the classroom.  Each kid has their own “mailbox” slot where anyone can write them letters!  The kids have been really excited to write each other notes.  Some of them spend their entire free choice time writing notes.  (They don’t know it yet, but in a few weeks we are going to make this a school wide thing!  Each classroom will have their message center in the hall so the kids can write to ANYONE! Oh my goodness they are going to be so excited!)

Hello hello!  So, last week (Thursday and Friday) on four different occasions teachers from around the school were complimenting our class on how we were doing such a nice job in the hallway.   We kept a running tally of how many people were telling us we were doing a nice job, but it started to get hard remembering if we had three, four, or five compliments.  I decided that as a class we were going to start a Listening Lookout.

When our class as a whole is doing a nice job of listening and following directions, we will get a point.  Our goal is 25 points (we already have 5).  I told the kiddos that when we got to 25 points we would have a class party of some sort to celebrate their success in being good listeners.  Any ideas on the class party?  Pizza, ice cream, movie?  Let me know your thoughts.

Good news, our stage has been built!  We have to do some sanding of the surface of the table tomorrow, and then on Thursday we are going to begin painting the stage!  The kiddos were so excited to show me the completed stage in Mrs. Grotjan’s room so I am really happy to see their excitement for their finished work!

We had a gallery walk today to focus our attention on some of our three sheeters in progress!

Our stage built and ready for final preparations!