IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

We’re back from our Winter Break and having a great week! Our students returned ready to jump right in. You might have heard about some changes in our room. The classroom has been rearranged, we have new lighting, and students now have a special spot for both our whole group lessons and walking throughout the school. These changes have been made in an effort to continuously move towards higher engagement and increased learning. The changes have been quite a topic conversation, but students are adjusting to them very well.

Another frequent topic of conversation this week was our field trip! Students were excited about our field trip ever since they returned to school on Monday. We spent time talking about what it means to be a good audience member and revisiting some of the things we learned during our Eric Carle author study earlier in the year. I am happy to say that the day went very well and the kids really enjoyed the show. The play was performed with mesmerizing puppets, talented puppeteers, and a black light.  After the three stories were over, students had the opportunity to ask questions and learn how the different puppets worked. I’m sure it won’t be long before the class is asking for our next field trip!

Here is a look at the red bird puppet they use in the Brown Bear, Brown Bear portion of the play.

Welcome back! I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and vacation!

Today we were back to school and in full swing! We did have some sad news though today. I’m sorry to say that over Thanksgiving Break, our beloved praying mantis, Cinderella Lightning McQueen, passed away. I shared this news with the students at the end of the day. They were sad but had some beautiful ideas of how to celebrate Cinderalla. We will be having a funeral and burial ceremony tomorrow in honor of our class pet. I will keep you updated as to how this plays into the culmination of our bug project!

Today we finally got to have our ice cream party, and the kids loved it! My mom came and brought the ice cream and toppings, who in case you ever hear about Mrs. Estridge, she comes in about once a week. The kids had delicious treats and seemed excited for our next class reward.

In addition to the icecream excitement, we have also been starting to work on building a tree/house for our praying mantis, Cinderella Lightning  McQueen. On Wednesday, in the studio, students worked on their first drafts of drawings of what the tree should look like. On Thursday, we did second on third drafts. We are now working on four group drafts and are excited to come up with a final whole class draft soon.

After drawing the drafts, students did a gallery walk of their work.

We did it! Today our class filled our rock jar to earn our very first classroom reward! For anyone who doesn’t know, we have been working towards an ice cream party since the beginning of the year. We have a jar in our classroom for rocks. Any time the WHOLE class is doing what they are supposed to, or goes above and beyond in a certain task, I put a rock into the jar. When the jar is full, we get a classroom reward! And today, we filled the jar with the final rock! So on Thursday, at 1:30, we will be celebrating with our ice cream party. Anyone who would like to come in and celebrate with us is more than welcome! I’m excited to celebrate our class’ good choices and move on to our second classroom reward!

This week, we have been exploring the world of mathematics with the help of pumpkins! On Monday, I brought in four pumpkins. In the morning, students had opportunities to do observational drawings of our pumpkins. In the afternoon, we used them to explore the concept of estimation. I had each student estimate which pumpkin they thought would weigh the most. Then, after weighing all of our pumpkins, they were able to assess whether or not their estimation was correct. Next, they estimated how many pumpkin seeds were in the our pumpkins. We spent the rest of the day removing the contents of our pumpkins, which was ooey-gooey fun!

Then, on Tuesday, we used our different counting strategies to count our pumpkin seeds. We have been talking about counting by  1s, 5s, and 10s. After a class discussion, we decided that when counting a large number of objects, grouping them by 10 and counting by 10s would be the most efficient way to do that (ask your child what “efficient” means:). We then split up into groups, grouped our pumpkin seeds, and counted them!

Jaymi and Jermaine work to remove all of the "pumpkin guts" from their pumpkin.

Jamaria, Chloe, Madison, and Larry group their pumpkin seeds into groups of 10 to help count them!