IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Today was a very special day in our year…it was the first snow of the season!

The first snow is always so exciting in kindergarten and first grade. So, instead of ignoring this special occasion, we honored it today by taking a break from our morning meeting and heading into the hallways to look at the snow fall through the windows! It really was beautiful and the kids enjoyed it!

In readers workshop, we are spending our second week talking about Flippy Dolphin and vowels. Last week we began talking about the different vowels and the sounds they make. We learned that if you are sounding out the word with one sound but it doesn’t work, you can use Flippy Dolphin to flip over and try the other sound that vowel makes. The kids are doing a nice job, but vowels can be tricky, so we’re taking some extra time to firm up our understanding of vowels and their sounds. Today we read Sue MacDonald Had A Book by Jim Tobin. It’s a fun story about the vowels (to the tune of Old MacDonald) if you ever want to check it out at the library sometime.

During math workshop, we are also reviewing and extending what we discussed last week…division. Last week, we only divided numbers into groups of two. This week, we are beginning to divide numbers in to groups of three and more.

In our last workshop of the day, story workshop, we did our second gallery walk of the year. During morning and free choices, students were able to do an observational drawing of a lamp in our room. Three of those drawings were selected and hung in the room. Then, during story workshop, students moved around the room with a post-it writing down compliments and suggestions for each drawing. As a class, we critiqued the three drawings. Tomorrow, those three students will do a second draft of their lamp drawing, and we will be able to take a look at what critique and revision really looks like.

Olivia and Jaeda work on their observational drawings of a lamp during morning choice time.

Additional reminders:

Thursday is picture retake day. If you would like your child to have their school picture retaken, please let me know, and I will send home a second picture order form for you.

Friday is our Fall Carnival from 6-8. I will be sending home a flyer and tickets tomorrow. This Fall Carnival will be in place of the November Family Night that was originally scheduled for Thursday.

Lastly, we are still working on our classroom identity panels. If you have not sent in a letter about your child yet, please do so. We will be sharing the remainder of those over the next couple of weeks, and I would love for every child to have something to share! Thanks so much!

This week, we are looking a little bit deeper into the human ear. Today, we did observational drawings of the ear. We learned that there is an inner ear and outer ear and hope to learn more about the eardrum later this week.

Tags: curious, observation, project, sound

On Friday, Dylan and Jackson were experimenting more with the cup phones. Dylan invited Ayden over to join them. He inserted one of the phones inside the other, creating a 3 way connection. The boys tried it out and were excited to discover that they could hear one another! They invited another friend, and another, to continue adding connections. Pretty soon, about half the class was involved with the multi way connection phone. They troubleshooted and problem solved together when connections were lost and broken and celebrated when they could hear one another or each other’s vibrations on the string.

Tags: collaboration, inspiration, project, sound

So the next day after I wrote you that email about if you had any thoughts or connections to studios,etc I got a connection to wish-tv! I am so excited to be going to wish tv in a couple of weeks. We will be headed to the studio for a tour and then we will see them all work together to put the noon news telecast live!

When I talked with the children today about the field trip their eyes filled with such excitement. This field trip will not only help with our study of weather and meteorology, but it will also help us with the idea that it takes a lot of collaboration to put on a telecast, and in our case a movie!

This week we have been talking about flippy dolphin and how to flip the sound of a vowel until you have the word sounded out. Today I read Sue Macdonald had a Book sung to the tune of Old Macdonald had a Farm, and the children LOVED IT!! They were so engaged and really paying attention to the short and long vowels that we were exploring!

We had an open house tonight for prospective families, and they just loved our room and what your children have created! There was so much excitement and interest in our program, and it just made me even more proud to be a part of this school. Thank you for being a part of it too.