IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

"Mrs. Argus, look at all these boxes!"- Hutton

If you thought we had supportive families, just wait untill you hear this- two days ago, our class sent home a letter explaining our need for some boxes for our airplane we are building. Within just two days, we have recieved over eighty-five boxes- that’s right EIGHTY FIVE!!!

This morning, the kids were so astonished at the large amount of boxes that have been coming in and we decided we needed to count and organize them. First, we had to talk about how to organize our growing number of materials. We decided by size would probably be best, so we have been making piles of small, medium, and large boxes. After the boxes were organized today, a group of friends began counting. We counted up all the way to eighty-five. We also have twenty paper towel rolls and one large can. We want to start planning on Monday and talk about how best to utilize our large number of resources. It will certainly be a day for lots of big thinking and possibilities.

Journey and Da'Sean are a huge help as they sort our boxes and paper towel rolls.

Tags: capable, creativity, inspiration, project

Our planning begins!

As you know, our class has been fascinated with the idea of flight and airplanes and we have been incorporating this concept into our classroom on a regular basis. As part of our airplane project, our class has decided to build a large airplane in our very own classroom! On Wednesday morning, the kids were greeted by the suprise of a large refrigerator box and big blue platform to inspire their building. They were so excited about the possibiliities and wanted to jump right into building. However, we have discovered that airplane building takes a lot of planning. First, we had to decide if we wanted to build an airplane or a helicoptor. Next, we had to decide how big to create it. Did we want something that everyone could fit in? Or just a few friends at a time? Would this airplane truly fly or would we create it to play with?

After discussing some of the details, we started talking about how to figure out how large to make our airplane. Our class agreed it would be best to create a plane that fit everyone in it, so we had to figure out how many kids were in our class. We counted 20. Then we had to figure out the best way to make 20 kids fit inside something. Did we want to cluster together in seats? Or did we want to have one, long plane? Lucas brought up the fact that planes he knew of usually had a couple rows. We eventually decided on two rows. Next, we had to figure out how many kids would go in each row. We started lining children up where we plan to build the airplane and started counting children in each row. How could we make the rows even? Regan came up with a great idea. “Ten in each row!” I asked her how she knew. “Because ten plus ten equals twenty!” We tried out Regan’s idea and it worked- two equal rows! After lining up the kids in their rows, we had the idea to mark the floor with tape to show how large we needed our plane to be. If you have visited our room lately, you may see how big we plan to make this plane! We are going to need lots of help with materials- primarily cardboard, cardboard boxes, and duct tape. As we start to accumulate more materials we will sort them and then begin to make a building plan.

"How many rows?"

The plane is marked off!

Ruth, Angela, and Monica using the number line during math workshop.

Today during math workshop, our class had a challenge. Each child had a paper with a number 1-20 and we needed to put them in order. We counted one by one and put the numbers in order, then practiced counting them forwards and backwards.  We talked about what we had created: a number line. We took turns walking along our number line and stepping by each number as we said it. While working on our math workshop problem (a take away problem), I challenged some friends to utilize the number line in their thinking. How could you use this tool to help make a subraction problem easier for you? Monica drew a number line in her math notebook and then counted backwards and crossed out the amount of numbers being taken away. Ruth and I worked together to show “hops” on a number line and drew backwards. Our class will continue to discuss and utilize number lines throughout the year. This is a valuable tool that can greatly help in our mathematical thinking!

After Reader’s Workshop, our class read a book called City Numbers by Joanne Schwartz. This book is really unique because it is filled with photography of numbers all over cities. The kids were excited to see such unusual numbers in such interesting ways (a light up sign that said 2.5%, a store sign that read 7.99, an address) we decided to go on a number walk of our own and see if we could find unique numbers around our school. We wrote what we saw and took pictures. We plan on creating a number book in the style of Schwartz’ book tomorrow.

Friends on our number walk.

Messi looks for triangles.

This morning while friends came in, we had a group of children start to create shapes out of some of our studio materials. Some were drawing shapes first, then cutting them out, and some were building shapes with some of our interesting materials. We then had the idea to sort the shapes and create posters that represented each shape. We gathered some magazines and started searching through the pictures to capture shapes for our posters. We will continue to add to our shape posters throughout the week.

Sascha looks for squares.

Tags: creativity

This week, we have been reading classic fables such as The Little Red Hen, The Three Billy Goats Gruff, and Goldilocks and the Three Bears. We have been comparing and contrasting the stories and also talking about how stories have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Today, we read Goldilococks and the Three Bears and sequenced pictures from the story on beginning, middle, end charts we made. Some friends in class even labeled their pictures and wrote sentences to describe each section of the story. I have also challenged the students to have a beginning, middle, and end to their stories in Writer’s Workshop and they have been doing a great job. On Monday, Journey wrote a story about learning to write a bike. On the first page, she wrote, ‘Age 4, riding with training wheels.’ On the second page, she wrote, ‘Age 5, no training wheels, but riding slow.’ On the last page, Journey wrote, “Age 6, riding with no training wheels and fast!” When you read at home with your child, try to see if you can identify the beginning, middle, and end of the story.

Angela's beginning, middle, end Goldilocks portrayal.

Lucas- “Mrs. Argus, I’m going to use 5 plus detail AND I’m going to do a beginning, middle, end in my story!”