IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Mrs. Argus explaining her class' tree choices.

Over the past week, we have been writing letters to Mrs. Argus’ class about trees.  At the beginning of the week, they asked us if we could plant trees together.  We gave them four choices of trees; apple, cherry, maple, or pecan.  Today they came back with the research about each tree.  After we learned about each choice both classes voted together and we had two winners.  The kids picked apple and cherry!  Over the next few weeks we are going to be working on planting an apple and a cherry tree in our garden.

As our week came to a close, we finished our chicken responsibilities.  This afternoon we had to clean out the chicken coop!  Take a look at the pictures below:

Sophia cleaning out the coop.

David helping clean out the coop.

Selah and Olivia are putting new hay in the coop.

The day is finally here!!  We have been practicing for weeks for tonight!  This afternoon, we had a dress rehearsal for all of our friends at school. Our play went off without a hitch!  Here is a sneak peek at our costumes.  See you tonight!!

Our dress rehearsal is done!!

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:

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.

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!”