IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

As a part of our geometry exploration today, the students used new materials to create shapes…gumdrops and toothpicks! While we were building we discovered that the gumdrops are called vertices, the place where two sides meet.  When someone asked Chairo about the gumdrops he responded with “These aren’t gumdrops today. We are using them as vertices.”  Cameron made the connection “Vertices are really like corners.”  The students also began building 3D shapes.  This was a great way for me to see what they already know about 3D shapes.  During share time we noticed a pattern with 2D shapes: the number of sides is the same as the number of vertices.

Today we had an engaging discussion on how to keep the close community in our classroom instead of it going sour (ex. arguments, friends getting hurt feelings, etc.). Heaven suggested we make a sign that shows what “friends” look like and what “friends” do not look like. Malachi suggested we have a meeting at the end of the day focusing on how we were friends that day. Then Makayla talked about how we need to make people happy so we are happy inside. The children all agreed and were already discussing how they do that for their friends. Maggie explained that that was the Golden Rule which was a beautiful connection.

So at the end of the day we had a Friendship Meeting where the children celebrated when and who they saw being good friends within our classroom community. You should have seen the smiles on our friends faces when other people noticed how they were being good friends to each other.

The last thing we did was we made a list of things\traits that friends have or show: some of the ideas were:

Friends-help, share, are fair, are nice, care for their friends…

We will continue to explore this idea and continue to celebrate the friends in our class being great friends!

Oh, and we also learned a song that some of my friends learned last year-F-R-I-E-N-D, F-R-I-E-N-D, F-R-I-E-N-D, that’s what friends are for.

What I strive to do each day is to provide a safe and supportive environment for each child in our class. By us focusing on friendship on occasion, and making the children conscious of their choices in a supportive manner,I feel that the community will continue to strengthen. I believe in each child in this class, and each child brings something so vital to the community. Through this exploration of what friendship is, we are focusing on the children thinking about how they are treating each other and really highlighting those beautiful interactions they are having each day.

In math workshop this week, we are continuing our learning of time. We have gotten pretty adept at telling time to the hour and drawing that time on clocks. We are improving in the area of telling time to the half hour and and writing half hour times on clocks. We have also been doing time story problems in our math notebooks this week. Students are learning different strategies to solve problems such as “Tyrese, Cece, Danielle, and Jace get on the bus at 3:30. They eat dinner four hours later. What time do they eat dinner?” Some students use small clock manipulatives to solve these problems. Others have been thinking about a clock as a round number line and have been making jumps around the numbers in the same way we would jump forwards or backwards on a number line. Both strategies work great for different students.

Chloe solves a time story problem in her math notebook.

Something new we have started, as I’m sure you’ve noticed in the papers your child is bringing home, is writing our morning message together during morning meeting. I was noticing that we all had a need for lesson on letter formation, spacing of words, and concepts of print. Not wanting to take any additional time away from our workshops, I decided to build these lessons into our morning meeting. So now, during morning meeting, I write two sentences on the board, that students are then able to copy. One is always the date and the second is something about our day. During this time, I talk to students about the proper formation of letters, such as which letters go below the line (into the “basement”), which letters go all the way to the top (into the “attic”), and which way tricky letters face (like b, d, s). We also talk about how many sentences we wrote, how many words are in each sentence, how many letters are in different words, and which words have capital letters. Although odd, these are all skills that we try to work on during kindergarten and first grade. As always, it’s exciting to see everyone’s growth. Just a week of writing like this together, and I can already see major improvements!

Aidan circles a capital letter in our morning message.

This week, in addition to working with elapsed time, we have been starting to learn how to tell time to the half hour! Once students made the connection that each number at the clock need to be counted in increments of 5, the half hour time came easily!

We made our big clock on the floor and talked about why the minute hand on the 6 meant half hour. Then, we build times using our bodies as the hands! Students loved having the opportunity to become the hands of the clock and really grasped the concept quickly!

We have been making our daily schedule with clocks to represent to times using plates and students have enjoyed making the clocks, so today, each child had the chance to make their own clock. They turned out great and we will be using the in the coming days to help us with a game!

We had a blast today with Mr. Thornburgh in his science lab! Check out our pictures and ask your child what their favorite part of the trip was!