IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

I am sure you have heard by now, but our afternoon was amazing!  We stared after recess with a special yoga.  We had about 14 Butler friends come and join us. The kids taught them a new routine and then showed them how to relax and meditate.

Yoga with our Butler friends.

Our Butler friends meditating at the end of yoga.

When we were finished with yoga we were relaxed and ready to work on our play.  We spent the last portion of our day rehearsing and going over the scenes.  I am so proud!  The kids are taking this very seriously and are very excited to perform for everyone next week.  Don’t forget!  We will have a night show at 6:00pm on Thursday, May 10th! Anyone is welcome!

We have started a new unit of study in Writer’s Workshop.  Today we started talking about letters.  I posed the question, “What is a letter?” The kids shared from their own experiences.  The kids brainstormed what you could do with a letter.  They shared why you write letters and how you feel when you get letters.  We ended our chat encouraging the kids to write their own letters.  I was so impressed to see so many friends going straight to the message center to write letters to other friends!

Tyler writing away!

Reid is writing a letter to Max.

During Free Choice today, we were working away on our play.  This afternoon, J’Nayla and Raki worked very hard on the sound effects.  I know that the kids really respect the work of others, but there was a moment today when I saw it come to life.  The two girls were recording the sound effects but each time they recorded they would also pick up background noise.  After a quick chat they decided to ask the class to be silent when they were actually recording.  (Asking this during free choice is typically unheard of in our class.)  J’Nayla explained it was for the play and almost instantly the noise stopped.  The girls were then able to record and get all the sound effects they needed with little problems.  After this moment, I could tell how each student felt about the play and about J’Nayla and Raki’s work.  They needed that part to be complete too and were ok being silent for a few moments to help out with their work. 🙂

J'Nayla and Raki were excited about their sound effects!

Today was a busy day! During school today I worked with the Neptune group and the Mars group on their planet representations. The Neptune group worked on a video the first so today we revisited the video and talked about what we liked and what we thought we could do better when we revised it. It was an excellent example of revisions and editing work to get a more refined piece. Isaac noticed that he was moving around and “twisting his neck” so he thought he could do better. Sydney noticed that their voices were a little soft. I noticed that I was doing too much talking so we all worked on our noticings to improve our work and it really helped us make a more polished video to share with our families.

Then it was time to visit with the Mars group. They had made a poster with one of their Butler teachers. So, I had them explain their poster, tell me what they liked about it, and tell me what they did not like or things that could be better. It was another example of really looking closely at our work and editing it to make it even better than what it was!

I cannot tell you how excited each group is to work on their posters…it has been a real treat for me to work so closely with each group as they have worked on them.

Today we got our chickens! I wish you could have seen the children during recess. Let me paint you a picture. The children are running around enjoying playing with each other when all of a sudden they see a truck pull into our parking lot with the chicken coop in theback. The children all run towards the fence of the playground yelling “chickens! chickens! chickens!” and then follow the truck as it drives down the parking lot. It was such a sight to see! Each class got a chance to go out into the yard today to meet the chickens and learn about our responsibilities as caretakers. We look forward to watching them grow!

We had an exciting afternoon today.  After recess, our class got to go meet our school chickens!  The kids were very interested in the chickens and had a lot of questions.  We will all be exploring together as we care for these animals in our school.

Two of our school chickens!

Mr. Andrew Brake, from Naptown Chickens explained the chickens to our class.

After the chickens we celebrated March and April’s birthdays.  Raki and Tyler worked together to make our cupcakes!

All of our friends are happy about the cupcakes!

I apologize for not being an active blogger this week!  Time has gotten away from me!  Over the past five days our kids have been working very hard on our play!  Mark your calendars for MAY 10th!  This is the night we will be performing our play for the families! Here are a few pictures to show the excitement in the room.

Dorothy is our Litterbug in the play. This week she completed her costume!

Wyatt worked on making a model of our set out of clay.

Reid worked very hard on his model of his helmet, a part of his costume.

We can’t wait to show you more on the actual big day!