IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Wyatt and Christina are very exctied about Mo Willems!

Jaiden loves the Piggy and Elephant books by Mo Willems.

Today we started an author study on Mo Willems in Reader’s Workshop.  The kids have really been drawn to his work as we read them in class.  I decided this might be a great author to study.  Over the next week or so we will be looking at the different techniques Mo Willems uses in his book and what we notice about his writing.  I am sure that stories will come home about this because he is our favorite author so far!

Monica paints with strawberry sauce and chocolate sauce.

“Ice cream for sale!!!!”- Zacharyah

“Do you like ice cream in a cone or in a cup?”

Our ice cream celebration was a huge success! What a wonderful learning oppurtunity to see how ice cream is made and discuss all things ice cream this afternoon. This morning, the kids created an ice cream parlor in our classroom and have been talking about selling, creating, and marketing ice cream all day. I wonder where this experience will lead us next…

"The vanilla is out! Do you want chocolate?" - Messi

Ice Cream Bingo

This week we have been adding to our physically fit classroom.  On Monday we started yoga in our class.  We do this after recess before we start Writer’s Workshop to calm ourselves and get ready to write.  The kids really love this!  Here are a few pictures of them “finding their breath.”  We have been practicing breathing deeply to calm as we begin.

While yoga is so great we have even more good news!!  As many of you have noticed, the kids have been bringing home A to Z Readers.  These are the little white paper books that are leveled readers.  Every six days (we have six groups) I meet with the students and work with them on a book that is at their exact reading level.  They then get to take it home to practice and keep!  We are in our first rotation and the kids are really excited about them!  Please help them by reading the books at home.  The more successful they feel the more excited they will be about reading!

Yesterday we started new literacy stations, and the last two days have been great with them!  We are making name graphs with our names.  We have to sort them by first letter, and then if the group gets done with that the children have to sort the names by the last letter of the name.  We are designing posters for our puppet shows.  We are taking a clipboard cruise and writing the words we see in our classroom.  We are seeking out objects out of a brown paper bag and then we are writing the first letter we hear or the whole word.  We are creating sentences by filling in our friends’ names within the sentence.  The last group is a station working with me…:)

The children have done such a nice job on these stations so I am excited to continue to do them each day!

Another exciting thing we did today was yoga!  The children at first were like, “What are we doing Mrs. Bucher”, but then they got into especially when we were doing the Tree Pose.  🙂

Talking with Mrs. Grotojan about how friends made successful helicoptors.

Fly, helicoptor, fly!

Every Thursday, our class gets a chance to work with Mrs. Grotojan in the Big Studio. The Big Studio has a large number of materials and resources different than the studio in our classroom and the kids always love going for a visit. Today, Mrs. Grotojan and the kids made helicoptors and tested them. They practiced measuring where to make their special cut with a ruler and weighted them with one, two, or three paperclips. Some friends’ helicoptors flew, some seemed to glide through the air, and some didn’t seen to fly at all!  During our discussion, we talked about why we supposed the helicoptors did the things they did and what changes we could make.