IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Today, during Math Workshop, I asked the kids, “How many triangles fit into a square?” As we are talking about Geometry it important to think about more than just sides of shapes 🙂  The kids then got a chance to explore the question and try to come up with the answer.  The great thing is there isn’t just one answer!  The kids have to think about it, talk about it, and explain their reasoning.  This problem really made them think.  We had a lot of talking and explaining so I venture to say we will be working on this problem for a few more days!  I am proud of them for being able to think outside of the box and come up with multiple solutions with explanations.  Here are a few of the ways we answered this question today:

This afternoon, we got to share our chicken knowledge with a second grade class. They seemed very interested and impressed with what we had to share. I was so proud of our friends.

Friends measure our garden plants.

Michael measures the Rosemary. Its eight inches!

We also broke into small groups and measured specific plants in our school garden. Each week, we will graph their growth. We hope to compare certain plant types to one another and discuss why they are growing the way they are.

Today, some friends hosted a Block Roll competition. Ask your child what this was all about!

Friends run and organize the Block Roll competition.

Lately, our class has been very into organizing class events during studio and explore. The other week, friends organized multiple plays for others to attend and watch. I remember during the beginning of the year, friends would sing songs for others. Today, friends organized what they called a Block Roll competition. It was really neat to see the kids organize and orchestrate this class competition on their own. We had so much fun!

Tags: chickens, collaboration, creativity, garden, project

Wyatt and Tyler working together to write an invitation to Miss Estridge's class.

This week during Writer’s Workshop we have been talking a lot about different types of letters.  Today, we talked about invitations and how they invite people to different events.  During our work time the kids had a chance to make invitations for our play for the other classes.  On Thursday we will have an afternoon performance and all of the classes will be invited.

Reid, Max, and Olivia are hard at work on their invitation to the preschool class.

Zek mails his thank you letter.

Kaitlyn tries out the mailbox.

Da’Sean gives Cameron some help mailing his letter.

This week, we have been learning about different types of reasons people send and receive mail. Yesterday, we wrote first drafts of some thank you notes to friends who helped us with our garden. Today, we made final copies on real stationary, put stamps on them, and walked them to the mailbox down the street. Our friends loved sending real mail. We hope it got picked up today by the mailman!

We have also started a dialogue with Mrs. Clark’s class about trees. Last week, we sent Mrs. Clark’s class a letter asking if they would help us plant some trees in our garden. They sent us a letter back saying yes! They gave us four choices: apple, nut, maple, and cherry. This week, we are researching the four types of trees and looking for the two that will fit best in our garden. We are paying close attention to the specific habitats they need and how soon they can benefit our garden. (We learned sugar maple trees could take a very long time until we could actually harvest maple syrup).

Messi helps make a list of "not so beneficial" bugs.

The beneficial bug list.

Jenesis creates some bee puppets and they do “the bee dance” to tell the other bees where the pollen is.

Ruth creates a grasshopper puppet.

We have also been talking about bugs and ways that they may affect our garden. We started a list of beneficial bugs and another list of not so beneficial bugs. We are hoping to do more research and educate our fellow classmates and families about which bugs are ok for the garden and which ones we need to watch out for.

Tags: garden, project, writing

The chickens are eating our reused food.

Our class is responsible for taking care of the chickens this week!  All of our friends are responsible for watering, feeding, and collecting the eggs daily.  Today we gained two eggs!  We are going to be graphing the eggs this week to see if we see a pattern in how many are laid each day.  During lunch today, we collected food scraps to feed to the chickens.  When we got outside, Tylisha said, “Look!  We are reusing food! We took our old food and gave it to the chickens!”