IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Thursday morning, we had another note from Sam and mouse! He asked us to build a city for him and his family with all of the things a regular city would have. This led us to make a list of building we knew that helped people in our community (beauty shop, school, library, museum, school, houses, etc)

Later on the in the day, we chose which areas of the city we would prefer to work on. Some friends are working with partners, some are working on their own. We talked about the idea of planning out our buildings before we just build, so we practiced thoughtfully drawing our buildings and labeling which shapes we would be needing in the building phase.

Tags: collaboration, geometry, problem solving, project

This week in Story Workshop, we are learning about the concept of memories. Today, we read the Mo Willems classic, Knuffle Bunny, about a little girl about losing her favorite bunny toy. We shared memories of times we had lost things as well and decided to put them down on paper! We are talking about the concept of how a memory is something that has really happened and it took place in the past. We will continue to delve into this concept this week!

We also have several new materials in our math boxes. Yesterday, friends were introduced to number puzzles- puzzles that need to be assembled to match a hundreds or two hundreds chart. The kids love doing them. We are also working on building numbers with base ten blocks and checking ourselves by re-counting the number.

Tags: story workshop, writing

Today was a very exciting day back! We received a note from Sam, our library mouse, asking us to build a city for him and his relatives (he said he ran out of room in the library). With the boxes we have collected from families, we will be planning for and creating a large dwelling for Sam and his family! Today, we thought about some questions we will need answered before we start our plans

1. How many mice are there?

2. What things do you need?

The kids are so excited. I am optimistic this will turn not only into a great geometry experience, but also support us as we learn to work as a team, negotiate, and use communication skills.

We also picked a day for our Literacy Celebration. Our class will be hosting this event to showcase our published pieces of writing from Story Workshop. The date we chose will be the evening of the January 24th, at 6pm. More information will be sent home shortly!

After break, the k-1 team will be starting a unit on geometry. We need your empty boxes, containers, and cans to make this happen! Please send them in with your child on Monday, January 7. Thanks for your help!

Today, we finished up creating winter gifts for our families and got to watch The Polar Express. We had a great time! The day was filled with hugs and excitement. We hope you have a wonderful winter break and will see you in 2013!