IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Here are all of our friends on the walk over to St. Richards.

Last Friday, a friend in the class said, “Mrs. Clark, we have so much paper!!”  I, in return, asked, “What should we do with it?!”  After some conversation we decided that we should look into a Paper Retriever Bin.  These are giant bins (ths size of the giant trash bins outside of our school.)  I contacted the Paper Retriever Company and found out that we might not have enough people to have a bin.  SO….today we took a walking field trip to our neighbor school, St. Richards.  We went over to talk to Mrs. Williams, the Early Childhood and Lower Division Head of St. Richards.  The kids told her what we were doing and then asked if St. Richards would be interested in helping us recycle paper.  She responded with a YES!  We then brainstormed some ideas of how we can communicate with the kids at St. Richards.  Our list involved writing letters, making signs, and writing an announcement for Mrs. Williams to read.  In the next few weeks we will be doing this to build our recycling partnership! 

Mrs. Williams had a lot of questions for us!

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.

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!

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.

VERY IMPORTANT NEWS!  A permission slip went home today for our class field trip!  On November 16th, we will be going to the White River Recycling and Transfer Facility.  We will be studying how the facility works.  Our class wants to implement a school wide recycling program so we will be taking notes!  Please sign and return the permission slip no later than November 14th.  Finally, we will be gone during our normal lunch hours so I ask that all students bring a sack lunch. 

BreAnna is working on her letter writing with the IPad.

We have a new piece of technology that the kids are getting a chance to use in the classroom.  Each day, some students get the opportunity to work on the IPad.  We have many apps for literacy and math.  The kids love to use it!  The new question in the classroom is, “Can I play with the IPad?”