IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Today Miss Jeffrey led a wonderful lesson on chunking words. We call it Chunky Monkey. So far we have discussed Ready Rooster, Stretchy Snake, and now we learning about Chunky Monkey. These are all strategies to help us figure out words when we are having trouble reading them. Chunky Monkey helps us figure out an unknown word by looking at known words in the unknown word. For example, “jumping” We might know the word “jump” and we might know the ending “ing” so we chunk those words together to form the word “jumping” It was great to see so many children catch on while Miss Jeffrey was using snap cubes to form different words! We will continue to explore this idea the rest of the week as well as beyond this week.

This week we are going to focus on learning about thunderstorms. If we are going to communicate about storms to others during our weather report then we have to know more about them. So, today we did an experiment where the children filled a clear plastic cup with water. Then they added shaving cream to the top of it. The last thing the children did was add blue food coloring to the top of the shaving cream and watched what happened…Selah described it as the “rain” was heavier then the “clouds” so the rain fell down into the water!! I then asked if that was how clouds were, and Isaac responded that the clouds absorb the rain and then the rain becomes to heavy for it so it falls. I was really blown away by how this experiment as well as discussion helped the children communicate what clouds do! We will continue to do this experiment throughout the rest of the week so that all of the children can participate in it, and let me tell you there were so many friends that kept coming up asking “Is it my turn?” So, I look forward to seeing and hearing the many other thoughts that come from the children!

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