IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Paper planes are back in full swing in room 104.

Our class has recently seen a resurgence in creating paper airplanes. We never stopped making them, but for a while there was a little lull. All of  sudden, we have close to 20 airplanes made a day during studio and explore. On Friday morning, I asked the kids if they would be interested in flying their planes outside on the big playground. They immediately said Yes! I let them know that at the end of the day we would be flying them and they could work on them throughout the day during studio and explore. Some friends worked all day adding special modifications to their planes, some worked on making them look beautiful with colors, numbers, and labeled parts, some friends made more than one plane and were excited to test both. At the end of the day, we took our planes outside, learned how to safely throw them from the playground equipment and let them fly!

Tajanaye getting ready to launch her plane from the dinosaur.

 

A group launch. Will the planes go the same direction with the wind?

 

To top off our experience outside, while we were walking in, Messi cried out, “Look! The sky!” Everyone looked up and saw a variety of jet strems in the sky planes had left that afternoon. The kids were so excited to see them.

 

The sky Friday afternoon.

Tags: creativity, curious, inspiration, paper airplane

Miss Goshert discussing the book with the kids after the read aloud!

As if this week has not been good enough with all of our recycling fun, it got BETTER!  Today we had our first mystery reader come into our classroom!  I explained the concept to the kids at the beginning of the day.  At 2:00 there would be someone coming into our classroom to read a story.  It was going to be a surprise, but they would get 3 clues during the day to help them figure it out.  It was the talk of the day!  “Who was it going to be? I think it’s going to be Mr. Smith!  No…it’s going to be Mrs. Williams!  I don’t know!  Mrs. Clark WHO IS IT?!”  Our first mystery reader was Miss Goshert (a Butler friend).  She came and read The House That Jack Built.  

I am hoping to continue this concept of a mystery reader each week on Fridays.  I feel strongly that kids should see lots of people reading, not just their teachers or close family members.  EVERYONE reads!  I would like to involve family members as we continue.  If this is something you would be interested in please let me know!  We can be flexible.  You can bring a book from home (or one of your favorites) or we can give you one.

Report Cards came home today!!  Please make sure to check the folders for them!  As always, please let me know if you have any questions!

Today, we began painting our puppet stage blue!  It is looking quite nice.  I think we will finish it tomorrow, and then we will be ready to add the curtains to it next week.  Thank you to Jett and Oliver’s moms for helping us paint today!

I wanted to tell you a story about something that I noticed today.   We have been talking about rhyming words a lot this week.  Reading books with rhyming words, playing rhyming games, etc.  Well, today Jamari was reading Hop on Pop by Dr. Suess during our Reader’s Workshop independent reading time.  While I was conferencing with him, I asked him if he would like to read his book (which is pretty long) to the class, and he was thrilled to read it and show his friends that he could read this book!  I told the friends as we were sitting down to listen to Madeline S. (who did an incredible job reading Playing to our friends) and Jamari read that Jamari was going to read this book, and that even though it was a longer book than usual we would honor his hard work that he had shown during our independent time.  I cannot begin to tell you how good of a job our friends did listening to Jamari.  Towards the end, they got up and surrounded Jamari and coached him through the rest of the book until we were all reading the last two pages (which were a little trickier for Jamari to read).  I was so proud of Jamari for reading this longer book and being so successful while reading, and I was so proud of the rest of our class for sitting, listening, and supporting their friend.  While watching this experience, I just sat back and really admired each and every kiddo that is in this class and appreciated what they were doing.

Friends look for similarities between their artwork and the photo.

Our inspiration.

Yesterday, Mrs. Kary shared one of the neatest pictures I have ever seen-a picture of the sky filled with jet streams from all different directions. She commented that Regan had seen it outside and gotten really excited and it turns out other friends saw it too! After getting a copy of this neat photograph, I shared it with the kids. They were  inspired to re-create this picture and we decided to use white paint and blue paper to create skies. We marble painted with a marble covered in paint, and rolled the marble carefully over the paper in a little tray. Some of our re-creations look very similar to the original inspiration picture, some are much different! We noted different shapes and symbols that were created by this unique art method too.

Messi liked the technique so much he made several masterpieces!

Ruth gives marble painting a try.

Tags: art, inspiration, project