IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

This morning, Bea brought in something quite interesting- a pomegranate! Many friends had never tried one and were excited to taste the juicy seeds. After tasting, we noticed how many extra seeds were left inside. Bea immediately had an idea- “We need to put them in our grow lab!” All of our friends agreed. We planted three separate containers several pomegranate seeds in each. This led us to a conversation we had last week, about planting other things. Last week, Tajanaye had a wonderful suggestion- to plant seeds and grow seed starters for a special sale and to raise money for our garden. We revisited this conversation after planting the pomegranate seeds, and Tajanaye remarked, “We can sell the seeds and people can give them to grandmas who are sick or people can hang them on their porch.”

Regan added, “If people have a family member that doesn’t have any food, we can give it to them and them can keep it.”

“If someone was sick like your brother or sister you could give it to them as a present.” Bea

Makenzi added, “It would be so kind. So kind. I would like to have a selling party, after our author celebration. Maybe we can put a lot of water to them and they will grow.”

This being said, we decided we would plant an entire package of carrot seeds in Keurig cups in our grow lab and get them started for our sale. Lucas brought up that he believed using these K cups was recycling.

“I think its recycling. I think I saw a book at Mrs. Clark’s class about rethink, reduce, recycle.” Lucas

“I was in Mrs. Clark’s class last year! We made up a song for recycling. It means you reuse, rethink and use it for something else instead of storing it in the trash.” BreAnna

These are such powerful connections for the kids to make. I am excited for exploring other green ways to enhance our garden this year.

We had another great day of building our mouse city, as well. The kids really worked as team to share supplies and negotiate tasks to get done for their buildings and stick to their plans.

Tags: collaboration, garden, geometry, problem solving, recycling, responsible

After drawing our plans and labeling what shapes we would need, we excidetly went into action on Friday! Friends were encouraged to grab various boxes and containers that were the shapes they had listed on their drawings, and then followed their construction plan. It was such an exciting time. This experience was a great opportunity to practice communication skills and negotiation, as friends realized they needed to work with their partners while deciding on exactly which size of shape to take. After working for quite a bit, some groups started to realize, “We need more materials!” “Like what?” I replied. The kids were then asked to write down on the back of their plans what other materials they would need to continue this process. Materials listed were:

markers

scissors

paint

paper

pencils

glue

wheels

Today, we will refer to our materials needed, gather, and go from there!

Tags: building, collaboration, geometry

Earlier in the week, we went outside and explored the snow.  The students made observations and predictions about how long it would take to melt.  They have also been coming up with theories as to how snow is formed.  They are curious about the differences between snow and rain.  I was excited when the students made connections to our previous work and wanted to measure the density of the water after the snow melted.  We found that the water was more dense than water from the sink and we believe that is due to the dirt that was in the snow.

Today we received some new science materials! We now have four microscopes and a class set of thermometers for our science investigations.  The scientists are very excited to explore the microscopes more closely next week.

Kristien and Ruth are working well together in Math Workshop.

During Math Workshop, we reviewed a game.  (Every Friday is game day). Today we played tic-tac-toe.  To play the game you move paperclips over two numbers and then add the numbers up.  The player then finds their answer on the board.  The goal is to get 3 sets of 2 in a row.

Today, Kristien and Ruth were playing together in Math Workshop.  While the kids are allowed to use a dry erase boards to help with the addition, I challenged them to try mental computation together.  Kristien and Ruth were up for the challenge.  I went over to those two and realized that they were working together to solve each problem.  The two friends were helping one another and doing it so peacefully! One of the reasons we work together so much in Math Workshop is to encourage collaboration.  Today, Kristien and Ruth were a great example of this!

We have a new website :  60.ips.k12.in.us

Please check it out! There you can find information about our school demographics, our latest parent-teacher organization notes, events that are taking place, and more. We also have a link to this blog. Shortly, we will have a school calendar and lunch calendar available. Currently, we are still having some problems with our blog but we hope to correct those soon. We hope you enjoy the site and can refer friends who may be interested in our school!