IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Miss Schmidt and Carriea read together.

The friends of room 104 were greeted by many exciting changes after their fall break and were eager and excited to get back to work today! They noticed some additions to our room (some hanging tree branches, lots of new plants, a changed word wall, a new mail center!) as well as the addition of a new teacher- Miss Deanna Schmidt! Miss Schmidt will be our student teacher from now untill the end of the school year. We are so lucky to have this wonderful extra hand from Butler to learn and grow with us throughout the rest of the year. I was impressed but not suprised with how welcoming and helpful the kids were to Miss Schmidt as she acclimated to our room today. She must feel so lucky to get to work with this wonderful group of children- I know I am.

In math workshop, we have been discussing the purpose of a number line and how it may help us in solving our math problems. We initially created a number line from the number from one to twenty, and it was then extended to twenty five (to help a friend answer a math problem whose answer was twenty five). The other day, we were trying to solve a problem that had a much higher answer than 25. One of our friends brought up a desire to have a number line that went higher than twenty five. Some friends wanted one that went to thirty. One wanted one up to fifty! Someone suggested that it get built up to one hundred and everyone got really excited and agreed on that. For the past couple of days, we have been creating our number line on our floor. We have been taking turns creating numbers in order on little cards and taping them to the floor in sequence. We have finally reached our goal- one hundred! We even used the number line today to figure out how many more positive points we needed for a celebration (our goal is 50, we have 43). The kids walked along the number line from 43 to 50, and counted 7 steps. Thus, we only need seven more points!

In talking about the number line, we revisited one of our math games we played at the beginning of the year, The Bunny Hop. This game has a mini number line that goes from 1 – 20, and each player rolls a dice and “hops” their bunny that many spaces untill they get to 20. The first one to 20 is the winner. After playing The Bunny Hop with partners, I decided that the kids needed to learn the real Bunny Hop dance ( you know, the one that they do at weddings and other banquet hall functions 🙂 ) I was shocked that most of the kids had never done The Bunny Hop! We sure have some great dancers.

I will certainly miss all of our friends over fall break! I hope all of our families have a wonderful and safe break. See you in two weeks!

"We need to measure the airplane."

Each day when the kids enter the room, they sign in to let me know they are at school and answer the daily question.Today our daily question said, “How long is our airplane? 10 feet, 20 feet, or 30 feet?”This question brought up a lot of conversation on measurement and estimation during our arrival activities. What is a good estimation? How do you know when you’ve made a good estimation? How do we learn to become good estimators? While friends were pondering these questions and engaging in conversation, I began to notice several children grab a material and begin lining it up against the side of the airplane. I asked Sascha what she was doing. “We’re using the inch worms!” she exclaimed. “Why?” I asked. Journey answered for her friend, “We need to measure the airplane.” The two friends were using one of our math workshop tools, inchworms, which are little worms that are one inch exactly. Several other children noticed what the girls were doing and became interested.

Messi assists with the inchworm measurement.

Ruth explains why the inchworms should stop.

 

The friends agreed that Ruth was right, we could stop. “So now what?” Lucas asked. We decided next that we needed to count the inch worms to see how many inches the plane was across. Cameron and Carriea worked together to count. Cameron put his finger on each worm as Carriea said what number worm it was. As they got higher and higher, into the hundreds, more friends became excited and joined in the counting.

Cameron carefully marks the worms counted with his finger.

 

 The excitement grew as we counted more nad more worms. “Two hundred eighty, two hundred eighty-one, two hundred eighty-two, two hundred eighty-three!!!” The kids all cheered. 

So excited to count!

 

 “Wait a second! That number is not part of our daily question!” Lucas brought up a good point. Our class was stuck. How could we have counted two hundred eighty-three inches and not have that be one of the three choices on the daily question. Monica suggested, “It’s not in feet!”We then discussed what exactly a foot was and that there were twelve inches in a foot. A friend suggested we break up the inch worms in groups of twelve, to show how many feet. The kids were so paitient as we took turns breaking up the two hundred eighty-three inch worms into little groups and neatly placed them on the floor. After all groups were created, we counted them together. We counted twenty-three groups of eleven and a group of ten, so our airplane is approximately twenty-four feet long! WOW!

Two hundred eighty-three inches. WOW!

 

 

 

 

 

Tags: arithmetic, capable, curious, motivation, project, thinking

The frame for our airplane.

Last week, our friend Journey’s dad, Mr. Newbold, came in and saw all 85 of the boxes we had collected and our measured space. He asked if our class would be interested in having a structure built to frame our airplane and guide our building. After some class discussion (and a very enthusiastic YES from the kids) we decided to take Mr. Newbold up on his offer to help us out.  This afternoon after lunch, our class was so excited to be greeted by Mr. Newbold, Journey, and her sister, Aidia, working on our frame. (which is close to 20 feet long, and about 5 feet wide) Our frame is made out of pvc piping which has been drilled together to hold it in place. The kids were fascinated by the process of how the piping was put together and began making observational drawings of what they saw being built and what ideas they had next for our airplane. Many questions and ideas have been floating around the classroom today. “How will we put up the sides of the airplane?” “Do we have enough boxes?” “Do we have too many boxes?” “Will everyone really be able to fit inside this thing?” We may not have all the answers yet, but one thing is for sure- the kids are truely dedicated and passionate about making this airplane a reality. Next, we will talk more about how to utilize our abundance of boxes and try to construct a way to help build our fuselage (the plane’s body).

Our friends are fascinated as they watch the structure being built.

Tags: capable, inspiration, project, thinking

Enjoying some time together at school.

The Beery family works on a sculpture.

I also had to share how much I enjoyed our family night last night. It was so great to see families engaging with one another and sharing the accomplishments of our children. The most powerful moment for me was when the children shared their family’s sculptures about

Tags: family focus, image of the child