IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Good evening families! I am hoping your break was as enjoyable and restful as mine. As we resume the school year, I have something new and exciting to share with you. I would like to start family journals this year with each of you as an additional way to communicate and support one another. This is something that is completely optional, and can be used daily, weekly, or a few times throughout the semester. You can write me questions, concerns, funny stories- anything that you want to share with me or have me discuss with your child. I will be sending these home tomorrow with your child. Write me and send it in whenever you see fit!

Also, Wednesday is our field trip to Butler’s Clowes Hall to see our Eric Carle performance. If you have volunteered to chaperone, please come to school by 11am and meet in our classroom. We will be finishing up lunch but will need to quickly make a restroom stop and then board the bus right away for the performance.

I am looking forward to seeing all of the kids’ smiling faces tomorrow morning!

Tags: field trip

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!

Hello!  Today was such a wonderful day!  This week we are focusing on “friendship is working together.”  Each day we will be working in partners to work on collaborating and working together.  This morning we started to work on a book in partners (or in threes for a couple of groups).  The groups had to work together to make their own gingerbread story. It was really amazing to see the children collaborate on this venture.  Each morning they are going to work together on this book and then Thursday we are going to share them in front of the group.

Jonah’s mom came in this afternoon to do some crafts with the kids.  Today they made owls, and I was so impressed with how hard they worked on them.  They really looked like owls!  The children were quite excited to bring them home and share them with you.

Madeline's beautiful owl

Jonah and Oliver working together on their gingerbread book!

Joseph and Isaac working together to co-author a gingerbread book!

Da'Sean and Angela make passports with Miss Schmidt.

Buenos dias! Tomorrow is our flight to Mexico (remember, the flight leaves at 6pm here at school) and in preparation, we made passports today. We talked about the signifigance of a passport and why it might be a good thing to have them when we travel. Our friends are so excited for our trip! We hope you can join us.  

Tags: collaboration

Good evening!  I know that I do not usually blog on Sunday evenings, but I have a couple of things on my mind that I thought I would go ahead and blog about.

On Thursday afternoon we are going to be making gingerbread houses (the kids do not know this yet).  They are going to be working on these in partners (11 total gingerbread houses will be made) and then they will be kept at school to marvel at when we get back to school in January.  I wanted to see if any parents wanted to come in around 2pm on Thursday to help with this fun project!  Let me know if you would like to come in!

Also, does anyone have a green thumb?  Our poor ferns are struggling to survive, and I did not know if anyone was willing to take one or both of our ferns over break and try nursing them back to health.  I think the changes in temperature in the building throughout the week and on the weekend does not help them so I thought having them in our building over break would probably not be very good for them.  Let me know if you would be interested in taking one or both.

Thanks to you all, and I am looking forward to this week of Gingerbread fun!