IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Something wonderful happened during Free Choice and Writer’s Workshop today.  Today the kids wanted to write a play.  I suggested writing something about trees and Wyatt came up with a beginning of a story.  We have been talking a lot about problem-solution writing, (each story has a problem that needs to be fixed and a solution that fixes it.)  Wyatt suggested that we write a play that was set in a forest.  The problem is that the animals are littering.  He also shared that one animal comes in with a solution, teaching the other characters how to recycle!

So we went with this idea of the play during Writer’s Workshop.  I encouraged the kids to use materials such as watercolors, clay, tree “cookies”, and dry erase boards to help tell parts of their story.  We talked about how we can all come up with ideas over the next two days and then start to create a play to perform.  It was amazing to see their creativity and the beginning of our play take shape!

Max was creating a porcupine as one of the characters in the play.

BreAnna created the Litter Bug who causes the problem in the play.

Reid was sculpting other characters for the play.

Tyler and Salih created the magical entrance to the forest, the setting for the play.

We had a special visitor this afternoon.  Today we had an arborist come in from Keep Indianapolis Beautiful.  Nate, our arborist (as the kids referred to him), taught us all about what happens when trees get injured.  Our skin heals itself and grows new cells, trees do something different.  Instead of growing new cells, trees grow new bark to try to cover up the wound.  So years and years later you can look at a tree and see it trying to heal or see the wound in a tree stump!  The kids were fascinated by this.  It got even better when we went outside to walk around and look at trees outside of our school.  We had a few wounded trees to study!

Nate was explaining the wounded tree to us.

We also got to talk a little bit more about the rings in the tree "cookies."

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