IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

So, through creating a new home for Sam and his family, through studying homes this week, it appeared to Miss Boyle and I that habitats was the common thread.  The children have always had such a fascination with the animals in our room so today we put out a few provocations that would follow both animals and homes…create various habitats and explore.

One thing that was a hit today was the projector and farm landscape!  The children LOVED creating stories with the animals and letting their imaginations run wild.  We will have this out as long as the interest is but we will explore various backgrounds and landscapes to explore various habitats.

Habitats….

When Mrs. Williams is not here on Mondays and Tuesdays we do Yoga in our classroom before we start our day.  Usually this is a little more difficult than doing yoga in Mrs. Williams’ room where everyone has their own space and a mat.  Today, the students did such a great job in our classroom that we were able to work in partners.  I was really proud of the students’ cooperation and determination with their partner.  Check out some of the great poses that happened today!

William and Andrew working together on their story.

Wyatt and Ruth working together on their story.

Maxwell and Reid working together on their story.

Something very exciting started to happen this week in Story Workshop.  As we finish up our publishing of our author study books, the kids started co-authoring books together.  Many of them are working with partners to create a story.  We are just in the beginning phases of this, but it is really exciting to see!

Today was a great day to start our week.  We played a new game Headbandz which the children LOVED!  We played both in the morning and then at our free choice time.  It is such a good game to get the children to ask broad questions to figure out one item!  We are going to play this more throughout the week!

Sarah baked cupcakes today to celebrate her birthday today and the pure joy beaming from her was really beautiful to see.  As we were singing to her she had such a sweet and happy face on.

Today we began exploring non-standard units of measuring.  We read a great book all about measuring with our feet so the children traced their foot and then cut it out.  Tomorrow we are going to use the feet they cut out to measure things around the room.  But we have a problem…all of our feet are different so how do we get the same results from our measurements?
That will be an exploration we will pursue later this week!

We had quite the day today! This morning, the kids were challenged to think deeply about our morning question: Are we more the same or more different? It turns out, our class was split almost 50/50 on the issue. We talked, debated, and listened to one another’s opinions regarding the question- a great conversation. Because we were so split on the issue, we decided to email another class to ask their opinion. On the big screen, we constructed an email to a class at Guion Creek Elementary with a familiar face in it- Miss Schmidt. For those of you who were with us last year, Miss Schmidt was our beloved student teacher who was in our room for almost the entire year. We introduced ourselves to her class and asked what their thoughts were on the question. To our delight, Miss Schmidt’s class responded back to us during the day and had their own question for us too. They said,

“Dear Mrs. Argus’ Class,

We look different, we’re different colors and some of us are girls and some of us are boys.  But we’re the same because we’re all human and even though we’re made different we’re still the same.

We go to Guion Creek Elementary School.  Do you know about mail?

Love,

Miss Schmidt’s Class”

Their email led us to a conversation about mail and how we could continue to communicate with this class. I am hoping this communication will help fuel our conversations on similarities and differences, community, and respect for humankind. We were able to email them back and told them what we knew about mail. We asked if it would be if we mailed them something too. We are looking forward to an email tomorrow from them!

Today during Math Workshop, we read the classic story, How Big is a Foot? about standard and nonstandard measurement. We had fun dramatizing the story as it happened and then tried out the king’s strategy from the story- measuring items around our room with a cutout of our actual feet. Upon experimenting with the feet, the kids started to notice differences between their measurements because of the size of their feet. How interesting…

Tags: arithmetic, collaboration, community, curious, email, friendship, letters, mail