IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Today, we got very exciting news… It is our turn to take care of the chickens! We have been waiting for this special opportunity.

We began by having a conversation about the chickens, the gardens, and our entire outside space. Christian and Journey had a lot to contribute to this conversation because they were in the class who had a project focusing on them last year! Students were interested in why the gardens were there, what they were used for, and our responsibility as caretakers!

Here are some pictures of our first experience outside. Tomorrow, we hope to find more eggs in the coop and have fresh feed to give o the chickens out of our hands!

Friends checking on the chickens.

Griffin with the chicken egg.

One of three of our chickens!

Today we had a wonderful day- a harvest and celebration! In th afternoon, our Butler Friends and Mr. Henderson led three small groups that harvested, prepared and cooked food for our class to share together. Miss Saks and friends created cinnamon muffins with eggs from the chickens, Miss Bickel and friends harvested and cooked brussels sprouts from our garden, and Mr. Henderson and Miss Weese and friends brewed lemon tea with fresh lemon balm from Mrs. Argus’ home garden!

One of the things we are focusing on as we begin this food/eating/garden project and experience is how food brings us together as a community. While enjoying our food together, we had discussions on friendship and how it felt to prepare for and have food prepared for us by friends. We talked about how it made us feel to enjoy food together and spend time with one another in this way. Friends said they felt…

special

yummy

fuzzy inside

important

happy

We will continue to investigate the ideas of harvest, feast, and community during our time together at school. We are looking forward to what conversations come from our big garden day Wednesday and our field trip to the orchard Friday!

Tags: chickens, community, friendship, garden, project

This morning, during word study, we were detectives!  Groups of kids were looking for sounds in words and different word endings in books.  We have been talking a lot about patterns in words and today we challenged the kids to find these things in books.  Our goal is to have them be able to apply their learning to real text and the hunt made an instant connection to this.

This afternoon, we had a special closing meeting with Miss Cegielski’s class.  We talked about friendship and practiced using “bug statements” together.  These are things that we use if someone is upset and needs to talk with their friends.  (ie: The first friend says, “It bugs me when you talk loudly because it makes me feel angry.  I would like you to stop.”  The second student replies with “I understand it bugs you when I talk loudly because it makes you feel angry.  I will stop.”)  We will be using these in our classroom to help us express our feelings.  Feel free to practice them at home!

Cameron and Sydney, from Miss Cegielski’s class are showing our friends how to use bug statements.

Each Friday in Math we have been playing different games to target math skills such as math facts and number sense.  This week the students were able to choose between all of the games we have learned so far.  Students played Number Burglar, Make 10 Go Fish, Ten Frame War, and Addition Tic Tac Toe.  Each pair of students chose two games to play.   I heard many conversations between partners involving deep mathematical thinking.  The students are really improving on the strategies behind the games!

Our science provocations this week have centered around observing and using magnifying glasses.  Many students expressed an interest in working on their observation skills by completing observational drawings.  We decided that we wanted to do observational drawings of a tree.  At the end of the day we spent some time observing the tree and drawing.  The students made detailed observations such as “leaves are already starting to fall” and “there’s a nest in this tree.” We will continue developing our observation skills next week!

Remember that Monday is picture day! Students DO NOT have to wear uniforms. Also Wednesday is our planting day.  Again, students do not have to wear uniforms.  Please send them in clothes that you don’t mind if they get dirty. Have a great weekend!

This week we have been studying a reading strategy called chunking. This helps us identify common letter blends and smaller words within an unknown word. We have used many strategies to explore this decoding method all week. First, we cut apart words written on index cards based on chunks that we found. We used magnetic letters to pull apart words that we were unsure about to see what sight words we could find. We also read a book about a boy named Anthony who realized his name Included the word ant, so he looked for ants every where he went.

Encourage your child to look for common chunks when reading with them at home! This will make attacking unfamiliar words easy and help them feel successful as they read.