IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Today, we had such a good day filled with some serious hard work in preparing for our puppet shows as well as creating wonderful books, solving problems during math workshop, and reading with some great enthusiasm.  Earlier this week we began talking about verbs with the ending -ing.  Today we began talking about words with the -ed ending.  Since we have begun talking about the endings in words, the children have been spotting them all around us!  It is amazing to see their commitment and enthusiasm for learning!

We have a couple of three sheeters almost finished, some sets to include in some of the shows, and let me tell you about these puppets-today, with the support of our Butler students, the children worked so hard to continue to add to their puppets.  Each time we worked on them, they were so engaged in preparing their puppets and adding more materials to make it more like they want it to look.  At the end of the day we decided to perform our shows for each other.  I had to read the stories so fast so each group could use their puppets and perform.  Even though it was a quick run though, the children really were excited about performing for each other.

I was so proud of them!

This week, our class is focusing on social skills and friendship. Most of our discussions have been focused on making and maintaining friends and how to treat others. This afternoon, we talked about the concept of forgiveness and what it means to truely forgive another person without holding any grudges. We talked about why forgiveness is important and how it felt to be forgiven. Michael told a story about a time when his sister forgave him for accidentally knocking down some blocks. He said, “After she forgave me, my bucket was filled way, way up!” After our talk about forgiveness, we began an activity on compliments and continuing to fill up one another’s buckets. We sat in a big circle and started with a ball of yarn. Each friend gave a compliment to another friend and held onto a piece of the yard as they threw the ball to the complimented friend. As we continued compliments around the circle, we created a web. Ruth called it, “A Friendship Web”. Da’Sean complimented David on his artistic skills. Sascha told Jenesis she thought she was such a good friend to her at recess. Messi was complimented on his story writing skills. It was truly incredible to watch the kids acknowledge one another in such a genuine way.

Here are all of our friends on the walk over to St. Richards.

Last Friday, a friend in the class said, “Mrs. Clark, we have so much paper!!”  I, in return, asked, “What should we do with it?!”  After some conversation we decided that we should look into a Paper Retriever Bin.  These are giant bins (ths size of the giant trash bins outside of our school.)  I contacted the Paper Retriever Company and found out that we might not have enough people to have a bin.  SO….today we took a walking field trip to our neighbor school, St. Richards.  We went over to talk to Mrs. Williams, the Early Childhood and Lower Division Head of St. Richards.  The kids told her what we were doing and then asked if St. Richards would be interested in helping us recycle paper.  She responded with a YES!  We then brainstormed some ideas of how we can communicate with the kids at St. Richards.  Our list involved writing letters, making signs, and writing an announcement for Mrs. Williams to read.  In the next few weeks we will be doing this to build our recycling partnership! 

Mrs. Williams had a lot of questions for us!

Today we did quite a bit with our puppet show preparation including two of the groups practicing in front of the rest of the class.  I wish you could have seen the excitement that the children had to not only watch but perform for each other.  Everyone wanted to perform, but we only had two perform today.  Tomorrow we will have the other two groups perform for their friends.

We also added the bottom fabric to the stage, and we worked on the three sheeters as well as the backgrounds for the shows.

We are getting so excited for our shows!!

Our friends supporting each other while others are performing!

Cha'kyra and Madeline S. working on their three sheeter for The Four Little Pigs.

Tevona excited to be a part of creating the fabric bottom of our stage.