Mar 21 2012
We enjoy Reader's Workshop outside on this sunny day!
Mar 20 2012
Please join us at 6pm for our Trading Card Family Night! At this event, you will be introduced to the wonderful world of Lab School trading cards and be invited to create and share. We are also hoping for families to add their names to the Lab School directory at this event and exchange phone numbers for play dates over spring break. It should be a great evening!
Mar 20 2012
Over the past week or so, we have tried something new to show our learning: strategy posters. When a child uses a novel idea to help them work through a problem, they are asked to make a poster of their thinking to be displayed in the room. This poster then serves as a guide for other children who may be encountering the same type of problem. This not only encourages kids to take ownership in thier own learning, but also encourages them to look to one another for help when problem solving and collaborate. Right now, we have six addition strategy posters and three posters about what to do when you come to a new word in reading. Look for them at Family Night on Thursday at 6pm!
Mar 19 2012
Today we had a few new materials in the room! We started our day with clay for sculpting and tree pieces for building. It was very exciting in Free Exploration as the kids started to explore the new items in the room. We had a few friends even sculpt trees!
J'Nayla's tree sculpture!
David's person that is made out of tree pieces!
Later in the day I asked the kids the questions, “Do trees have stories to tell?” I was interested to see if the kids could create stories from the materials in the room. I was so excited when a group of friends started to create a story with the with the dinosaurs and tree parts. They said that their drums put the dinosaurs to sleep!
David, Selah, CJ, and Reid are playing their drums and creating their story.
This process of creating stories with materials is something new that we are introducing into the classroom. During our choice time, I might put out a few materials and pose a question to the students as I did today. While I was in Portland, we studied something called Story Workshop. It is where the kids create stories using materials. We found that the materials help the students create rich stories. This is something that we are still exploring, but for the first few chances the kids are loving it! I am sure I will have more to share in the upcoming weeks!
Mar 19 2012
Sascha and her bee story.
This morning, a large group of friends explored storytelling about plants through the use of pastels. The stories are a wonderful reflection of some of our learning about gardens and growth. Sascha and Aidan also chose to incorporate bees into their plant stories and had some interesting ideas about what bees do with flowers. This hopefully leads to an investigation!
The creation of the greenhouse!
We were also lucky enough to be given a mini greenhouse by a friend of the classroom. This morning, Messi, Da’Sean and Monica worked with our Butler friends to put it together. They even planted four different plants- carrots, eggplants, tomatoes, and onions- yum! Hopefully, the greenhouse gets the germination process started and we can eventually transplant the veggies to our actual garden.
We get a visit from some special friends- Butler Blue 2 and Butler Blue 3- Trip!
