IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Today we had a great discussion about our Movie Premier that we will be having on Thursday, December 20th. There are so many things the friends want to do to get this Movie Premier prepared (make posters, make food, have a ticket booth, make a donations jar, etc.) The first thing they wanted to do, though, was make an invitation so you all could come to the show. They were so excited to give you the invitations!!

We hope you can make it!

As part of Miss Jeffrey’s practicum she needs to have some time running the classroom if it were her own so this past week she did most of the teaching with me in the room the whole time. The next two weeks she will be running the whole day pretty much by herself. While she has the majority of the class, I will be pulling small groups at a time to start filming our puppet show movie. I have been so proud of how she has grown as a teacher this semester. It is good experience for her to be running the day! I just wanted to make you aware of this so you knew what was going on.

We had another fun filled day! In math we have been exploring place value by building and breaking apart numbers with base ten blocks.  Today we learned a new math game with a deck of cards.  Using the cards two through nine the students flip two cards over and build a number.  The student with the bigger number gets to keep all the cards! We also visited the chickens for the last time today.  We collected 12 eggs total and really enjoyed taking care of them this week.  Daysia, Cameron, and Isabella made cupcakes for us to celebrate their November birthdays!

Today was a fun day filled to the brim with celebration!

Our morning was relatively normal, with readers workshop and some yoga. After lunch, the fun began!  We watched Disney’s “Oceans” movie, which, much like the Planet Earth movies, documents sea life throughout the world. Kids enjoyed getting cozy in their jammies and watching the film. After the movie was over, our birthday friends had finished making the cupcakes. We sang to all five of our November birthday friends and enjoyed pink, sprinkly cupcakes!

Seth, Spencer, Hayes, Abel, Jamaria, and Hayes’ brother Rylan pose for the birthday picture!

Madeline, Geneva, Seth, and Jaeda wait patiently for their cupcakes!

Cece and Aaliyah had fun in their pajamas!

All this week, we have been exploring sound patterns. Thursday and today, friends were invited to figure out how they could incorporate instruments into their sound patterns. Coincidentally, this also opened up the idea of teaching other friends our song patterns which started the idea of bands and orchestras. It has been a pleasure to watch the kids communicate with one another and become excited about teaching and learning one anothers’ songs. Today, I asked the kids to think about what music was. Without discussion, the kids were invited to create illustrations and drawings of music. Next week, we will talk together about the concept of music and revisit these pictures. It was exciting to see much of our learning about sound incorporated into friends’ pictures, such as sound waves, vibration, and pitch.

Tags: curious, music, project, sound, thinking

As I shared earlier this week, in Reader’s Workshop we have been talking about different perspectives of characters.  We have been reading Henry’s Freedom Box and Abe’s Honest Words.  Both of these books have the topic of slavery.  So this week we have been having a lot of rich conversations about perspectives of people during the time frame of the Civil War.   What were their feelings when it relates to slavery and how they treated people that were different.  I can’t even begin to tell you about how amazing their conversation was, but I will leave you with the quote of the day from Ruth: “I’m glad that slavery is gone because there are some really great people in this class that wouldn’t be here if it was still around.”