IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Today was a fun day because we went to meet the chickens at our school! The children were very excited to meet them and they did such a nice job respecting them and their environment!! We talked about how we need to use a quiet voice around them and we should not put our hands on the coop. Our chickens names are Thelma, Louise,and Dottie. We all looked inside to see if there were any eggs in the coop but there were not! Luckily, it will be our week soon to take care of the chickens so we will be able to collect the eggs.

Thank you to all who came to Family Night tonight-what a great turnout!! We had such a great time, and we look forward to the next Family Night!

Some of my favorite learning that occurs during the school year, is learning that flows out of projects.

We are getting deeper into our shark project this week! Today, after reading part of a book entitled, 100 Things You Should Know About Sharks, we entered into a mathematical discussion about length. In the book, we read that a whale shark is forty feet long. After reading, we talked about how long forty feet really is. One student proposed that we connect the pipes (a building material in our room) to make them forty feet long, so that we can see how long the whale shark is. Kids got right to work connecting the pipes, but soon realized that we had some more learning to do. Here are some of the comments and questions I heard:

“How will we know when it’s forty feet long.”

“It’s too long! I counted that we’ve used 122 pipes.” (Each pipe is about 1-2 inches long)

“How long is a foot?”

“It won’t fit inside! We have to go outside to the hallway.”

As is often true in life, we didn’t solve this problem or answer all of these questions before the day was through. And I feel very ok with that. Real learning occurs at a slow and natural pace. We’ll keep working on our pipes tomorrow and see waht learning comes from another day of exploration with sharks!

Aidan connects pips to try and see how long 40 feet is.

Many students in our class have expressed an interest in becoming a scientist. The curiosity has been building over the past few days and we are in the beginning stages of a project.  The students have been exploring science tools and books during free exploration and they have been making discoveries.  Students have been using balances to measure weight, thermometers, eye droppers, and magnifying glasses.  They are excited to do real science and I cannot wait to see where their curiosities take us! Here are some of their first scientific discoveries. Check back soon for more updates! Remember Family Night is from 6-7 tonight!

“Look the eye dropper will move water from one place to another!” Daysia

“I can tell that this is real science because it shows how much pounds this is.” Donovan.

“I can tell that these weigh the same because it is in the middle.” Ashley

“I am trying to add chips to balance the rocks. I’m trying to see if I add more if this will go up and that will go down.” David

We had a busy day today. We continued our conversation about dinosaur bones and how they can help us understand dinosaurs. We learned that by looking at the teeth of dinosaurs, paleontologists can tell whether the dinosaur was a carnivore (meat eater) or herbivore (plant eater). Today we also talked about how bones give us clues to ancestry and connections to other animals that remain today. Many friends have commented on the similarities to various sea creatures, lizards, and chickens.  Our friends have many theories about what happened to the dinosaurs and who their descendants are.

This week we have also been talking about subtraction. We have been highlighting various friends’ strategies for solving these problems during share time and have created strategy posters. These posters can then support friends during independent problem solving time the following day by using a strategy that was successful for another child. The kids also get quite excited when their strategy goes up as a poster!

Tags: dinosaurs, project

This week we are responsible for taking care of our school chickens.  Today, we went out as a class for the first time.  We give them water, food, and checked for eggs!  We collected 4 eggs.  Check out the pictures below to see some of our friends taking care of the chickens.