IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

This morning, Ms. Simpson gave me four Hedge Apples she found on her way to school. What’s a Hedge Apple, you ask? That’s what we were trying to figure out all day! The odd looking, wrinkly fruits are green and fresh smelling, and come from certain trees located in the Meridian-Kessler neighborhood. We presented them to the kids this morning and asked them, “What is a Hedge Apple?” After a little bit of research and talking to some other adults who knew of the strange fruit, we learned that some people believe Hedge Apples have special powers- particularly keeping away spiders and insects. Friends were then inspired to create their own magic Hedge Apple stories throughout their free time and during Story Workshop. We hope to learn more about these intriguing things Monday!

Tags: curious, garden, inspiration, story telling, story workshop

Last week, I had a conversation with three friends about games.  Raki, Reid, and Tylisha all shared their thoughts on how playing games was fun and cheating was not good.  Today we took this small group conversation and shared it with all of our other friends and asked what they thought about games.  Here are some of their quotes from the conversation.

*Miles- When you are playing with a friend you always should have fun & it’s more likely about fun instead of winning. It’s more important than winning because winning is more like cheating sometimes and having fun is more like following the rules and doing what the rules say.

*Reid- Well, It’s more about having fun because if you win you might brag and bragging is like bullying.  If you brag it’s not nice to the loser who lost the game.

*Townes- It’s kind of what Reid said, if you said, “I won! I won!  You loose!”  The looser won’t be happy because the winner bragged.

*Ruth- When your cheating it’s like lying and lying is like keeping a secret from someone.  Then if you lie a bunch you don’t know where to start telling the truth.

I’m really looking forward to see where this game project takes us.  I can already see that we are going to be talking a lot about being fair and working together. 🙂

After yoga today, we were very excited to begin to explore the data we collected yesterday! We began by discussing what situations you would take real data in everyday life. Students had some really great ideas, ranging from taking a family poll about dinner choices to much bigger and more significant ideas. They really seem to grasp the idea of collecting information using surveys and the importance of displaying their results in an easily readable and accessible way. We didn’t finish creating our graphs today, but we got a great start! Here are some pictures of our experience!

Yesterday, one of our Block A students, Miss Weese, led an experience on the senses. She and a small group of students harvested basil and peppers from our garden and then created a dip to enjoy! The whole class got to taste the dip and talked about how it connected to their five senses.

It tasted like Basil!  Regan

It tasted sweet! Addie

I think it smelled like cheese. Dylan

Its a different kind of smell- cheese and watery. Amiah

I hear the dipping. Addie

I heard the sounds of people crunching. And I heard a scrape when I dipped the pepper! Tajanaye

I think it feels good to make your own food. That way you can grow big and strong. J’Den

I also wanted to share something we have been spending a lot of time on during Reader’s Workshop- reading strategies. The past two weeks, we have been working on Ready Rooster (getting ready for the first sound in the word) and Stretchy Snake (stretching the word for all the sounds you hear). This week, we have been working with Chunky Monkey (finding word parts that are friendly to you and chunking them as you read). Mr. Henderson created this amazing and funny video on blabberize.com with a monkey talking with his voice. We have been projecting it on the big screen and having the kids do chunking activities with the Chunky Monkey. The kids LOVE it!

Tags: garden, project, reading