IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

The past two days, we have been creating mini things to go inside of our buildings for Mouse Town. Each group has been brainstorming what materials would make sense to be inside of their building, and then using materials from the classroom to create those items.

Aaliyah and Faith created sleeping bags for their mouse hotel.

Cece and Davi created notebooks for their mouse school.

With help from Madeline, Ben created a ping pong table for the Chucky Cheese.

Geneva and Olivia made shelves for the food in the mouse grocery store.

And Danielle and Jaeda made clothes to sell in the mouse mall!

A box filled with fashionable clothes!

The other day, we read The Peace Book by Todd Parr. It has a wonderful message;

Peace is listening to different kinds of music.

Peace is helping your neighbor.

Peace is saying sorry when you hurt someone.

And so on.

The kids were challenged to come up with their own verse for our own Peace Book. After we thought deeply about what peace meant to each of us, we made a drawing of a metaphor for peace. We then used wire and beads to create sculptures for our metaphors. They are beautiful.

Today, we read Mem Fox’ Whoever You Are about children all over the world. We made notes of the many differences yet similarities between the children. We have started a list about all the things people always have in common. So far, it reads…

We all have hearts.

We all are from somewhere.

Everyone grows.

Everyone has blood.

Everyone has a brain.

Everyone has pain.

Everyone has feelings.

We will discuss this idea more in the coming days.

Tags: collaboration, community, creativity, friendship, peace, world

Last week and this week we have been talking about Informational Text (nonfiction) in Reader’s Workshop.  To begin we studied the different components of nonfiction; glossary, table of contents, bold words, index, subtitles, and captions.  Today, as we came to captions, the kids worked together in partners to create captions of pictures we took in our classroom.  They were so excited to create their own from pictures of their friends.

Today during Reader’s Workshop the children had a new challenge.  They had to find a partner and work together to write a caption for a picture they were given of their classmates! The students really worked hard to observe the picture and come up with a sentence to describe what was happening in the picture. I was really proud of their cooperation with each other while they worked.  Tomorrow we will continue our study of Informational Texts by hunting for the text features that we learned about in nonfiction weather books that are in their book bags!

Last night, at our Family Night, the kids were able to paint fruits and vegetables to create pieces of art for our cafeteria.  Today, we brought that same activity into our classroom.  The kids were painting cucumbers, oranges, pomegranates, lemons, and more!

To add to that, the kids were really curious about the pomegranate.  Some had ate one before and others had never seen it.  So after lunch today we opened it up and tasted the pomegranate seeds.  There were many friends that requested seconds and thirds!  I wish I would have taken a picture because their faces and expressions were priceless!  Be sure to ask about it tonight!