IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

We had a busy day today! Earlier this week, I blogged about money.  We had started learning about pennies on Monday.  Well today we put that knowledge to work.  The kids had a chance to build a bird feeder for outside in our school courtyard.  There were a lot of choices of what to put on the bird feeder, but each student only got 6 cents and they had to make the decision on what to buy with their money.  (No worries, they got the pinecone for free!)  They spent yesterday planning their creation and what materials they needed to buy and today our store opened!

In Writer’s Workshop we have spent this week talking about different details in writing.  Today we took that into our play.  As a class we talked about details we see in writing and how we can add them to our play.  Sophia gave us the idea that we could add details in our costumes.  So today, we spent our time planning and sketching our costumes.  A few friends even write lists of what they needed to make their costumes!

Finally, today was the last day for our Butler friends!  We had a wonderful semester with them and I personally appreciated all the support and help they provided!  While we will miss them, I have already been told they will be back to visit 🙂

Miss Kirby opening up her gift from the class.

Miss Hunter, Miss Prop, Miss Moheban, and Miss Weist opening up their gifts from the class.

This week during math, all of our classes are learning about the meaning of money and investigating pennies. Each class had a special “sale” today that involved children spending a number of pretend pennies to build a particular item. Our class created worm puppets! Each child had a shopping list yesterday and had to choose which types of embellishments they wanted to add. It’s important to note that the embellishments cost different amounts of pennies and the children didn’t have enough pennies to purchase all of the items. The kids practiced prioritizing! Today, the kids were given ten pennies and their shopping list to look over. They then took their shopping list to the worm store and purchased materials to create their worm puppets. Very exciting! After the puppets were assembled, we took them outside and introduced them to our garden space.

Fighting worm puppets. Scary!

Enjoying our garden space.

Regan and her worm!

Tags: arithmetic, creativity

Reid and Kristien are working hard on their swords!

Now that we have the play written and revised we are starting to work on other parts.  Today, Reid and Kristien started working on props.  They are both litter guards (who protect the Litterbug) and they both felt they needed swords.  So today, with the help of Miss Robison, they took a how to book and followed the directions on how to make swords.  Both have been try excited about this since the prop book was introduced to the class.  It was a very exciting to see the finished products!

The finished swords!

Miss Christen from Sharp community garden comes for a visit!

Yesterday, we were visited by a friend from Sharp Community Garden, Miss Christen. Miss Christen talked to us about how her organization set up a community garden to support families that didn’t have fresh fruits and vegetables. We learned that the garden is right over by Butler University (across from St. Thomas) and anyone can volunteer time to work and eat from the garden. We had a long list of questions for Miss Christen about how to go about starting a garden. How much should we water? How long will ours take to grow? Does her garden have bees and worms? Should we plant everyday? What should we do about weeds? Miss Christen was even kind enough to invite us to see her garden and help with planting in a few weeks. She offered to come assist us with ours as well. (We are currently waiting to hear back from our Butler friends in the leadership class about funding for some garden boxes and garden equipment- very exciting!)

One of our questions for Miss Christen was where to put our garden. She suggested somewhere where there is lots of sun (at least six hours), good soil, and water can get to it easily. After her suggestions, we decided to take a walk outside our building into the “yard” area on the north side of the building and look for space. After exploring for quite a bit, we found a space we felt comfortable with! Ruth commented there were hardly any weeds in that relative area. David said that there was plenty of light and it would get lots of rain. For the rest of our time, we decided to play and explore our new found garden space more. As this was happening, some very interesting things happened. First, friends started collecting weeds to protect our new garden space. Children started running at full speed down a sloped space and grabbing weeds as they ran. Ruth explained, “Its a game- I call it Weed Runner! Try to not stop while you grab them!” More and more friends joined in on the fun.

Friends enjoy getting to know our garden space on a beautiful day.

Monica collects weeds from Ruth’s Weed Runner game.

Hutton pulls weeds to improve our garden space. He likes Weed Runner!

 Friends also began placing their handfuls of weeds in a rectangular shape around our proposed garden sight to mark its location. This led to a class discussion on shapes today and what shapes our garden boxes could be in. We went back outside again today and showed one another shapes that our garden could be in.

A heart shaped garden box.

What about doing a triangle for our garden box?

Should we do a rectangle for our garden box?

Cameron shows us what a crescent shape is.

Tags: arithmetic, collaboration, garden, image of the child, problem solving, thinking

Here we are!

We had a fabulous time at Butler on Friday! When we got to Butler in the morning, we had the chance to meet some new Butler friends who are part of an educational leadership and policy class in the College of Education. They have taken an interest in our garden project and our schoolwide garden initiative and are assisting us in getting funds to begin planting. They were also kind enough to walk us down to the farm and assist us in exploring the space, help us test soil at the farm, and wonder with us about the beginnings of our school garden. We are beginning to wonder what our own garden will look like and where we will place our garden. A big thanks to all of our chaperones and Butler students who joined us on this trip. 🙂

Da'Sean, Carriea, and Kaitlyn enjoy our quick bus ride to Butler University!

Miss Schmidt and friends are excited to be at Butler.

The beautiful view of the canal we passed while walking down to the farm.

Angela spots some of the cold weather vegetables growing at the Butler Farm.

Messi, David and a new Butler friend walk the farm and look for signs of growth.

Our group at the Butler Farm!

Ruth finds bees at the farm. How can bees be helpful to a garden?

Monica and a new Butler friend take soil samples.

Hutton enjoys Holcomb gardens.

Tags: Butler, field trip, garden, inspiration