IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Today we got an email from Miss Schmidt’s class asking if we would like to be individual pen pals and learn about one specific friend. We decided we would definitely like to do that! We let them know that we would like to start as soon as possible- and will be starting tomorrow! How exciting!

We also had an oppurtunity to write some mail to Mr. Henderson, our former student teacher. Miss Crume, a student teacher in Miss Cegielski’s room and friend of his, let us know that he would love to hear from us. We had a nice conversation about being homesick and what that may feel like (Mr. Henderson is all the way in Portland, OR) and talked about how we could use supportive, positive words to brighten his day. We wrote individual notes and also write him a big class note asking him about his new class and what Portland is like. We hope to hear back from him soon.

Lastly, Jackson’s mom, Mrs. Bauer, recently shared an incredible website called POSTCROSSING.com On the website, you register and then gain access to an address where you can send a postcard to. The amazing part is the addresses are just about everywhere in the world! Once you send a postcard to a new friend, you receive a postcard from someone (also a new friend). Today, we received our first ‘assignment’ from Postcrossing- and we got to write to a person in Bulgaria! We had a chance to look up Bulgaria on a world map and will be talking more about the Atlas in the coming days. We are so excited to see where our first postcard arrives from!

Tags: collaboration, community, culture, curious, friendship, mail, pen pals, student teacher, world

Today (in preparation of our trip to the Gecko exhibit at the Children’s Museum) we began looking closer at deserts.  We brought in some sand and some fossils that would be in a desert.  The children really loved exploring with the sand!  We also had a really interesting snake x-ray that Alejandra used to help her tell a story of a snake coming into a house!  We will continue to explore deserts this week!

We also opened a dollhouse to play with and oh my-it was so fun to see so many friends playing with it, and such great caretakers we have!

Our friends were really excited to have our new Butler teachers in our class today.  Mr. Webster, Miss Slagel, Miss Merar, and Miss Devers will be in our room every Monday for their practicum.  I was so impressed with how they jumped in, asked questions, and were really engaged with the children and their work!

Today we were greeted by four new Butler friends that are Block A practicum students from Butler University. We loved getting to know Mr. Cohn, Miss Hoffman, Miss Goetz, and Miss Goodwin. These students will be with us each Monday for the rest of the semester, learning with us! We are so glad to have them.

We continued our exploration in measurement today during problem solving. Towards the end of last week, we were given a problem that said we needed to figure out how big a garden bed would be if it was as long as our table and as wide as our calendar. This led us to try to figure out the best way to measure these things and also explore the concepts of “long” and “wide”. We learned as we worked through the problem and when a friend discovered something we thought would be helpful to others, we added it to our measurement terms chart. We eventually discovered the term “perimeter” and learned that in order to all get an exact measurement, we would need to work with standard measurement- in our case, rulers. The kids have enjoyed experimenting with and learning the best ways to measure accurately with rulers. Today, the kids were challenged with another measurement/perimeter story problem. We ended up having a big debate about the difference between width and length and learned we may need to change or add to our anchor chart to clarify what these terms mean. The kids were disappointed to learn that we had to end problem solving for the day before we had all officially solved the problem but were excited to know that we would continue working on the same one tomorrow. It was a big day for us!

Tags: arithmetic, Butler, capable, collaboration, measurement

Today we were so excited to welcome four Block A students from Butler into our classroom: Miss Sofianopoulos, Miss Kampel, Miss Chapman, and Mr. Heeter.  Our Butler friends got to know the students today and the students had a great time showing them the routines and procedures in our room.  They will join us each Monday and we look forward to working with them this semester!

I wish you could have been there today when Miss Boyle and I told the kiddos about the field trip coming up.  They were hanging onto every word I was saying and they were SUPER excited when I told them we were seeing the new Geckos exhibit at the Museum.

We are going to begin studying deserts and geckos coming up on Monday so we are really thrilled for this fun project!