IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

We are continuing with our author’s study in Story Workshop this week.  Before break, the students worked in their groups and made observations about their author’s voice, word choice, illustrations, and structure.  This week I am meeting with each group and we are getting to know more about the authors’ lives and how that has impacted their writing.  Today the students focusing on H.A. Rey learned that he loves animals and always visits the zoo when he travels to a new city.  We made connections between his life and his stories.  “He writes about Curious George because he likes animals and likes going to the zoo,” Donovan.  We will continue learning more about the different authors this week and then start drafting our own stories inspired by the authors soon!

Noah H. has been focusing on making a Robot series during Story Workshop for the past month or so. I asked him if and how he was going to store the books, and we thought of making a Robot book holder. Noah first showed me what he wanted the robot to look like. Then we talked about some ideas for materials, and today we started building it! Noah after painting his robot is going to add slinky arms and legs, flashy lights, and make it open to place his Robot series in there.

I love being able to collaborate with children and see their fantastic ideas come to life!

Exciting things are happening I our classroom, in studio, and in yoga! Our students have taken a big interest in how yoga helps our body, the muscle systems, and using art to depict their body and how it moves! For the past few weeks, Mrs. Grotjan and Mrs. Williams have been working together to engage students in experiences that connect yoga with the arts. In our classroom, we have just begun to explore our body and the muscles we have. As this special project continues to unfold outside our classroom, we will comtimue to comment this learning to work happening each day! Be on the look out for news about an upcoming field trip that connects to these experiences!

This week, we have been talking a lot about patterns and how they may connect to sound and listening. We have been practicing creating patterns in many ways, including creating them with our bodies. Our friends love trying out other friends’ body patterns. It feels like dancing!

This morning  friends were presented with several patterns that I had drawn. A simple ABAB pattern, an AABB pattern, and a few others. After talking about characteristics of patterns, I then posed the question to them, “How can you incorporate this with sound?”

Almost immediately, Makenzi mentioned that she had been playing the piano in the big studio with Mrs. Grotjan and had followed along with something that looked like a pattern that told her what notes to play. That gave us the idea that we could create music to these patterns!

We tried singing high pitches and low pitches to the ABAB pattern. Then we tried with some of the other patterns. When a new pattern gave us a third option, one friend suggested clapping instead of singing for that portion. This then inspired us to create our own song patterns. We had so much fun creating and sharing them!

Tags: music, patterns, project, sound

Today we began exploring grouping or multiplication as a class. It was very interesting and logical to see that the children first thought to add the two numbers that were given instead of grouping them. They were persistent and determined to figure out what to do with the numbers after we read the story problem a few times. Joe, when we first started working, had already shown how to do the number story problem. I loved to see how he connected the numbers and knew how to work with them. It was so fun to see everyone’s thinking so clearly and see their determination shine through.

The children as well as me and Miss Jeffrey LOVED seeing all of the puppets come back to school today! They are SUPER creative,and the children were excited to show them off to each other. We are so excited to use them for our movie. A big thank you to YOU for helping with the puppet making process!

Selah, Zakeyah, and Joe started working on the set design for the movie today. They worked hard to make clouds, the school, rain, a window, and the beginnings of the tree. They were collaborating so well together and really focusing on creating a beautiful set for our puppet show! We will continue to work on the set throughout this week, and possibly start filming next week!