IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Today we did quite a bit with our puppet show preparation including two of the groups practicing in front of the rest of the class.  I wish you could have seen the excitement that the children had to not only watch but perform for each other.  Everyone wanted to perform, but we only had two perform today.  Tomorrow we will have the other two groups perform for their friends.

We also added the bottom fabric to the stage, and we worked on the three sheeters as well as the backgrounds for the shows.

We are getting so excited for our shows!!

Our friends supporting each other while others are performing!

Cha'kyra and Madeline S. working on their three sheeter for The Four Little Pigs.

Tevona excited to be a part of creating the fabric bottom of our stage.

Today was a fantastic day!  We were quite busy with working on our puppets and three sheeters, learning about “ing”, counting doubles, and getting more tally marks because of our great choices of listening and following directions.

Speaking of our tally marks for our Listening Lookout Points, the kiddos and I had a nice discussion today about what we wanted to do for our class party once we get 25 points (we have 12 points currently).  Some suggestions were putting some balloons on our table, having an ice cream party, and watching a movie.  We ended up with the idea to have a pajama party where we can eat popcorn and watch a movie.  I cannot begin to tell you how excited the children are with this idea to have a  pajama party!  I will let you know when we are getting close to reaching our goal of 25 points so that you can be prepared for your child to wear their pajamas to school.

Today, we began painting our puppet stage blue!  It is looking quite nice.  I think we will finish it tomorrow, and then we will be ready to add the curtains to it next week.  Thank you to Jett and Oliver’s moms for helping us paint today!

I wanted to tell you a story about something that I noticed today.   We have been talking about rhyming words a lot this week.  Reading books with rhyming words, playing rhyming games, etc.  Well, today Jamari was reading Hop on Pop by Dr. Suess during our Reader’s Workshop independent reading time.  While I was conferencing with him, I asked him if he would like to read his book (which is pretty long) to the class, and he was thrilled to read it and show his friends that he could read this book!  I told the friends as we were sitting down to listen to Madeline S. (who did an incredible job reading Playing to our friends) and Jamari read that Jamari was going to read this book, and that even though it was a longer book than usual we would honor his hard work that he had shown during our independent time.  I cannot begin to tell you how good of a job our friends did listening to Jamari.  Towards the end, they got up and surrounded Jamari and coached him through the rest of the book until we were all reading the last two pages (which were a little trickier for Jamari to read).  I was so proud of Jamari for reading this longer book and being so successful while reading, and I was so proud of the rest of our class for sitting, listening, and supporting their friend.  While watching this experience, I just sat back and really admired each and every kiddo that is in this class and appreciated what they were doing.

Hello hello!  So, today my question for the class was what color do we want to paint the puppet stage.  They had a choice between black, blue, and white.  White did not have any votes, black had some, but blue was the winner.  Tomorrow, Jett’s mother will be in to help the children paint the stage blue.  Then we are on to make curtains and backdrops for the shows.

It was so fun today because I introduced what “…” was to the class.  Most of the children when I asked them what it was said, “PERIOD!”  Then, after I told them what it was many of the children were finding elipses around our room.  They were so excited that they now know what it is called!

Heaven sanding the stage getting it ready to paint.

Oliver working on the three sheeter for The Runaway Pancake

Our vote today for which color to paint the stage

Hello hello!  So, last week (Thursday and Friday) on four different occasions teachers from around the school were complimenting our class on how we were doing such a nice job in the hallway.   We kept a running tally of how many people were telling us we were doing a nice job, but it started to get hard remembering if we had three, four, or five compliments.  I decided that as a class we were going to start a Listening Lookout.

When our class as a whole is doing a nice job of listening and following directions, we will get a point.  Our goal is 25 points (we already have 5).  I told the kiddos that when we got to 25 points we would have a class party of some sort to celebrate their success in being good listeners.  Any ideas on the class party?  Pizza, ice cream, movie?  Let me know your thoughts.

Good news, our stage has been built!  We have to do some sanding of the surface of the table tomorrow, and then on Thursday we are going to begin painting the stage!  The kiddos were so excited to show me the completed stage in Mrs. Grotjan’s room so I am really happy to see their excitement for their finished work!

We had a gallery walk today to focus our attention on some of our three sheeters in progress!

Our stage built and ready for final preparations!