IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Today we explored with a new material during our free exploration.  This morning, the kids had a chance to work with oil pastels to create stories about trees.  Over the past few weeks we have been exploring water colors and clay, but oil pastels are new to us.  I set them out and simply let the kids explore at first.  Tylisha said, “These look like really cool crayons!”  David added, “Yeah, except they are shorter!”  As time went on the kids started to create scenes for our tree play.  Some of them even designed their costumes that they would like to wear 🙂

Dorothy is creating a picture using the new oil pastels!

While writing books is not necessarily new, we added a new twist on our writing today. Our minilesson focused on adding details to our writing.  We talked a little bit about how we had been working on our play and I suggested that the kids start adding details to that story if they were interested.  I gave them the choice to start writing parts of the play or go back to their own older stories.  I was so amazed that 3/4s of the class chose to write about the play and add more details!

David is adding details to his story version of our play.

Wyatt is adding details to his version of the play.

Finally, in math workshop today, we continued to work with a material that was new to us before Spring Break.  The week before break we started to explore base ten blocks.  Base ten blocks are a hands on approach to explain place value.  Today we used a chart to break apart the different parts of each number (ie: showing that tens place and ones place.)  Place value is such an important concept to understand, but at the same time hard to visualize.  I am happy to say that the kids are really starting to understand this concept and have easily taken to the new material!

Kristien was creating a number using the base ten blocks.

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