IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Today was quite the day!  Our puppeteer, Miss Debbi, came into school today, and she showed us a few different kinds of puppets including Trent.  Our friends loved talking to Trent and was definitely a highlight of our time with Miss Debbi.  We all made some puppets (with a moveable arm) and then did a little performance while Miss Debbi played some music.   Thank you to the families that came in to enjoy this experience with us as well as help our friends with creating their puppets.  It was really nice to see you all there.

Another exciting part of today was that today was the first day we had our Butler students in our class.  Mr. Henderson, Miss Lauren, Miss Jessica, and Miss Jeffrey came into our room for the entire day today, and the children just adored them!  They will be in our class every Wednesday (and occasionally on Monday) so I am sure that you will here about them.

Remember that tomorrow night at 6pm is our first Lab School Parent Meeting.  We will be meeting to discuss what we want our Parent group to look like in our school.   There is no childcare available so if you need to bring your child please provide a book or quiet activity that they can do while we meet.

A closer look at a puppet Madeline P. created!

Our friends working hard creating their puppets!

Trent!

Tevona, Makayla, and Saa sharing their puppets.

Good evening,

The anticipation for the visiting puppeteer is just growing by the minute.  Every adult that walks in the room is the puppeteer (the children think).  Today we listed some questions that we have for the puppeteer….”How do you make it move?  What can you use to make the puppet?  How do you decide what your show will be?” are some of the questions that the friends asked.

If you are free and would like to come in you are more than welcome to come in and help the children make puppets tomorrow from 11:15-12:15.

Below are a couple pictures of the train set and kerplunk (two new items in our room) that the children really enjoy playing!

Our new train set!

Jett enjoying Kerplunk!

Good afternoon!  What a day!  We had all 22 friends here at school today, and it was so fun to see everyone in action.  We discussed the four puppet shows we will be performing.  I met with each group during our project time, and we discussed what characters we needed and who was going to play which character.  It was interesting to see how the children negotiated who was going to play each character, and everyone seems happy with who they are going to be playing. 

Next steps for our project….

Meet with the puppeteer on Wednesday.

Figure out what words we are going to say and write a script.

Make the puppets and backdrops.

Make the programs, invites, posters for the show.

Put on the show!!

(Now, I am not sure how long this is going to take and that it all entails, but I will keep you up to date with all of the fun we are having as well as great learning experiences with writing, sharing, acting, retelling a story.)

Today as a way to get excited for the football season we had Football Friday!  I loved seeing many of our friends wear their football gear.  We did some drills (one way to get our physical standards met) that we thought some football players might do.  We also did some football mazes that helped us with our counting by 1’s, 2’s, 3’s, and 5’s.  It was such a good challenge for the kiddos, and they seemed to really want to keep working on them.  Jonah said, “I did my maze by counting by 3’s all the way to 300!”  He was so excited to share that with his friends. Some friends were making pictures of football themed ideas while Madeline S. was writing all of the numbers down that were on people’s jerseys.

Fun day!!

Makayla sharing her picture of her and Peyton Manning.

Emily and Jamari working hard on a maze where they have to count by 5's!

The kids were buzzing today about who was going to be in what puppet show for our grand puppet show.  During Reader’s Workshop and our end of the day free choice/project work time many were talking about it and informing others what the various parts were in each story.

Today we started a new game during Math Workshop called Forward/Backward.  The children had to roll two dice (one with numerals 1-6 and one with plus and minus signs on it).  Once they rolled both dice they had to move that many spaces on their board.  The first person to the finish line won the game.  I have to say that every pair playing this game was so engaged in this activity that we switched partners and continued the play.  It was fun to see the children so engaged during this learning experience.

I am excited for Football Friday tomorrow!

Shaniyia and Jason playing the game together during Math Workshop.