IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

We play one of our morning community building games, WHO IS IT? with our Butler friends.

Miss Roby reads to us about gardens.

We work on our large class clock, now including minutes.

Lucas and Hutton hit the dance floor at the end of a busy day.

We had another great day today. We were joined by our Butler Block A students, Miss Pistello, Miss Roby, Miss Barr, and Miss Legg. The kids are enjoying getting to know our new friends through games, working in small groups, and working individually with these adults.

Tags: Butler, friendship

Just a reminder that tomorrow evening from 6-7 is our Family Night at school.  We will be exploring message center ideas!  Hope to see you there!!

Yesterday I was sick.  Today when I walked in I was blown away by how the children responded that I was back.  They were running towards me, they were giving me cards that they had written, they were telling me that they cried yesterday when they found out I was not going to be there.  It was SO nice and sweet of them to think of me.

During Writer’s Workshop today, the children checked in with their partners about their work so far on their biographies.  I saw some really thoughtful collaboration that will enhance everyone’s writing.  Tomorrow we will start working on final drafts of the biographies so I look forward to seeing these biographies come to life even more.

We added minutes to our clocks today so the next few days we are going to continue to look at minutes of a clock.  There were many friends that really got it when we started to talk about how it goes by fives so I am eager to see their continued understanding shine.

DeOnna and Jonah working hard to add the minutes to their clocks they made last week.

Tevona and Isaac working together to enhance their biographies of each other.

Just a reminder, Family Night is tomorrow night from 6:00-7:00 at the school!  This family night will focus on our message center and writing messages to each other!

As we were working on our working on our morning message today, some friends asked some questions that lead into a discussion about letters. We work with and explore letters everyday in our classroom. However, students verbalized a new observation today, that no one had ever shared with the whole class…”Some uppercase letters look the same as their lowercase letter, and some look different.” I thought this was a great observation, excited that it was a conclusion they came to on their own! I offered up a continued observation of letters as a free choice, and by the end of the day, students had sorted out all the letters that look the same in upper and lower case form, and all that look different!

"Different" letters

Aaliyah and Leah sort the "same" letters during free choice time.

Other excitement today, revolved around our earthquake drill…

Paiton, Jo'Vyon, and DayTwon demonstrate how to properly protect yourself in the rare case of an earthquake.

And lastly, we started a new scientific exploration today, considering how observation can help us identify things. Students were given a notecard and a toy car. They were asked to draw their car. Then after a minute of drawing. I collected their cars, mixed them all up, and redistributed them. Students had to use their observations from their drawings to explain how they knew that their new car was not the same as their original.

Jermaine, Paiton, Jamaria, Zakeyah, Aaliyah, and William observe their 2nd round of cars.