IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Sascha and Journey show the boys a new dance move.

We have discovered that our class LOVES to dance! Often during free exploration time, I put on music for the kids to dance to if they choose. The types of music range from pop all the way to world music. I believe in the importance of exposing the kids to lots of different types of music and allowing them to move, express themselves and feel good. We are experimenting with moving to the beat and moving with the tempo and general feel of the song.

A friend answers our daily question, "Do you like to dance?"

Dancing machines!

 

 

Ruth and the one hundred squares

During arrival each morning, the children are given several options for what to do once they come in. These options change each week and are chosen to help facilitate conversation and engagement between students. This week, the choices are building with the unifix cubes, creating designs on the geo boards, or looking at the books in our library. The kids have quickly chosen the geo boards as a favorite activity and love creating designs on them. This morning, Ruth showed me what looked like, “Like a million squares!” I asked her, “Are there really a million?” She wasn’t sure. I asked her how we could find out how many. She started counting to see how many squares went across the top. “This is going to take a long time!” She said. I suggested if we know there are ten in each row, we could count by tens to figure out our grand total. Ruth counted, “Ten, twenty, thirty, fourty, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety, one hundred! There’s one hundred!” All of our friends could hardly believe there were actually one hundred squares!

Aidan and Christian looking good during explore time

We have discovered that our class has a great interest in creating and flying our own airplanes. After watching the children create all week, I decided that we would take this interest and pair it together with our interest in length and measurement. Today during Math Workshop, one of our friends, Hutton, showed the entire class how to make a paper airplane. We worked together to help friends that were struggling and made sure that each child had an airplane. Then we decorated and personalized our airplanes so we knew which one belonged to us. We then decided to take turns flying our airplane to see which could go the farthest. We started with a question, “How will we know which is farthest?” Some ideas were to measure in miles, floor tiles, and with kids. McKinley brought up inches. We then took a look at a 6 inch ruler. Regan said, “That’s not big enough silly!” So we pulled out a 12 inch ruler. We decided it was still not going to be big enough to measure our flights. Regan then found the large, 60 inch measuring tape in my basket. The class decided it would be sufficient to get us started. We sat as a class and counted down a takeoff for each child (“One, Two THREEEE!!!”) and watched the planes soar. Some of the planes made it past 60 inches. We then had to problem solve as to how to measure past our measuring tape by adding another large ruler. The kids wrote their distances on a big chart and we discussed the results afterwards. Make sure to take a look at your child’s airplane in thier take home folder this weekend. They did a great job with this activity!

"My airplane is pink. Isn't it nice?" - Messi

Cameron and Dylan preparing their airplanes for flight.

As school begins, the Lab School is working on building a community. One of the ways we are building a community in our classroom is through creating and honoring Agreements for Peace. As a class, we sat down together and talked about what a peaceful being is and what a peacemaker is. We talked about ways that we could show peacefulness in our classroom and came up with our Agreements for Peace. Below is our list:

Share.

Be kind.

Listen to who is talking.

Take care of our materials.

As the school year progresses, we may see that we need more agreements added or changed. These decesions will be made as a class after thoughtful discussion.

Kaitlyn writes some of our Agreements for Peace.