IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

The kids have been so excited all week about meeting again in our friendship circle. During calendar today, Miss Schmidt asked some of our friends what day was today. Angela told her it was Friday and said she knew because, “It is friendship circle day!”

During friendship circle, our two classes celebrated several friends that got to add pieces of fabric to the friendship loom. They got to do this by acting like a friend throughout the week.

Sydney and Emily share a handshake with our friendship circle.

After we recognized our special friends, Mrs. Bucher, Miss Schmidt and I asked the kids about special handshakes. What handshakes had they worked on this week? Did they have any prospective ideas for our friendship circle handshake? Many pairs shared what they had worked on this week. We saw many different kinds of handshakes, including some with hand clapping, hugs, noises, and counting. Next week, we will talk about deciding on a friendship circle handshake we can do each time we meet. We are so excited to see where this time leads us!

David and Da'Sean share a cool greeting with us.

Tags: creativity, friendship, project

Hello hello!  Today was our trip to Clowes Hall to see three Eric Carle stories come to live before us!  The children did such a nice job and loved seeing the puppets tell the stories of some of their favorite Eric Carle stories.  Thank you to those who came to make it run smoothly and enjoy it with the kiddos in class.

Monday we started a new thing during Math Workshop.  I have made files for each of the children.  During the math game portion of Math Workshop (once a week) they can look in their file and do whatever is in it.  The file will contain things like number puzzles, writing number work, fill in the missing number, number games, etc.  This is an opportunity for me to reach each child in another way to help foster their personal growth in math.  The children this week have hundreds charts in their files, and they had to fill in the missing numbers that were present in the 1-100 chart.  The children really loved this game!  Most of the kiddos did it on Monday so on Tuesday they were looking for something else, but I told them that they only have to do it one day a week.  I love that they are eager for it!!

Yesterday we planted two bulbs that will hopefully bloom into beautiful flowers! The children loved exploring the bulb as well as planting it.  There were a couple of green leaves exposed after we planted them, and the children throughout the rest of the day swore that it was already growing!  We are going to measure the leaves each week to keep track of the growth.

Our morning meeting has changed a little bit.  After reading a book about morning meetings, it came apparent that it matters the order in which we conduct the morning meeting each day. Also having a sharing time is so beneficial to the children because it is one more time that the children feel they are being heard.  Children also love to share things about themselves so by having this formal share time they are able to do that!  So, our morning meetings look like this now:

Greeting (do various forms of greetings to say good morning to those around us)

Share Time (children will have the opportunity to share something.  Every child can share but they can share only one time a week so that it ensures that every child can have the opportunity.  There is a sign up sheet that the children can sign up to share their news)

Group Time (This will be a dance, silly song, an activity of some sort that allows for us to build our community)

Morning Message (This will be the time to go over the question on the board as well as attendance and calendar)

The children have really responded to this more formal morning meeting time and I am thrilled for that!  I think it will continue to build our community.

Cha'kyra looking at the root of the bulb

getting the dirt ready for our plant

Emily and Shaniyia exploring the manipulatives on the light table.

Welcome back!  It was so good to see all of the kiddos today.  We had such a good day filled with hard workers, engaged learners, and new experiences.

One of those new experiences happened at the end of the day today.  Mrs. Argus’ class and our class went to an empty classroom where we had our first Friendship Circle.  Both of our classes have been talking about friendship and what it means to be a good friend and take care of our friends.  Over break Mrs. Argus and I had several conversations about how we could have our two classes work together and meld their ideas of what friendship looks like.  We thought maybe by doing a Friendship Circle each Monday and Friday we could focus our two classes and celebrate how friendship is established, cared for, and lasting.

So…today we met and discussed that we were going to meet on Mondays and Fridays together as one big Friendship Circle.  The children were THRILLED!  Then, we introduced the Friendship Loom.  This loom we discussed as a group is something to show how we are caring for our friends.  During Lunch and Recess when a teacher or maybe it is another child notices someone being kind to another person then they can add a piece of fabric to our loom.  We will continue to add to it each day/week to show how our friends are being caring and loving to each other!  Today, we celebrated a few different examples of friends caring for friends.

We look forward to seeing where this goes!

Mrs. Argus explaining the loom to the friends in class!

Working together to weave the fabric.

Celebrating our good friends!

Today was another fun day because we went and supported the 2nd-6th graders get ready for their holiday performance.  The children loved singing along with them and watching their older peers sing.

So the past couple of weeks there has been some debate over who gets to be where in line.  We had a class discussion a couple of weeks ago to discuss why we want to be in the front of line.  This afternoon we had another discussion about where we are in line, and I asked the children what we could do so that there is less arguing over where we are in line.  The children gave some interesting ideas like “We could wear tags that have numbers on them and then you know where you are in line.”  Another friend said, “They could be necklaces because the tags will be lost.”  Another friend said, “We could have a list of our names and then each day we can see where we are going to be in line.”  We talked about which one we thought would work, and we have a new system that we are going to start tomorrow.  Along the wall inside the door of our classroom, there are the children’s names.  Each day they will see their names.  That will be the order they will be in for that day, and then the next day it will change.  The children seemed quite excited about it, and I asked them if they thought this would help with our lines.  They all agreed that they thought this would be something fair we could do.  I will let you know how it goes…:)

We sent home gifts to you all today.  The children were very excited about the gifts to hang so we thought we would send them home today rather than wait until Thursday.  I hope that you all enjoyed the DVD that I made for you all.  Just a little something to show you the children throughout the first semester.

Playing "Roll-a-Gingerbread" during Math Workshop today!

Cha'kyra and Heaven taking a moment for a picture!

One of the little figures that Jonah's mom helped make with us today!