IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

J'Nayla and CJ are playing the exchange game.

Today we learned a new game in Math Workshop.  We learned the exchange game and the kids loved it!  To play this game all you need is dice, pennies, and nickels.  The kids roll the dice and pick up that many pennies.  Once they have collected 5 pennies they can exchange it for a nickel!  Whoever has the most nickels wins.  I knew they would be excited about learning a new game, but I had no idea how long they would want to keep playing it!  We had one group that after 20 minutes was still wanting more.

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.

Today we went shopping during Math Workshop! The children have been learning about the penny this week so today we made this lovely table filled with all of this beautiful stuff! Each item had a price tag on it. The children learned that they were going to be making a telescope to look at the stars! They could not buy everything so they had to use their shopping list to figure out what they wanted to buy. With only 10 cents each, the children really thought about what they wanted. The children were so disappointed when they learned they were not actually putting together their telescope today, but throughout the rest of the day they said how excited they were for tomorrow!

During Project Work time today we focused on the children making their representations of the facts they have learned about their planet. We had children working with posters, book making, paints…so much going on and everyone was so engaged! I look forward to seeing the process of the children preparing their knowledge to share to you!

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!

We have been collaborating with Mrs. Grotjan and Miss Robison to help us make stamps of our Greek symbols for our planets. Today the children carved the Greek symbol and used their stamp during Studio. It was a little tricky at first but the children did such a nice job working together to make their stamp! Miss Robison is going to send a couple of pictures so I will be able to post those when I get them.

We had a lot of singing today! While waiting for Studio time to begin, Mr. Nored sang P-E-N-N-Y with the class, and they just LOVED it. They kept asking to sing it over and over again. When they went over to Studio, they sang it again for Miss Robison and Mrs. Grotjan!

Yesterday I showed the children how to make a movie using pens and paper that I learned from Mo Willems, the author of the Pigeon books and Piggy and Gerald. Today, Sydney came in with a movie she made while at home. Then it turned into five friends wanting to make movies so we spent some of the beginning of the day making movies together…so fun! I challenged the kids, Can you make a Space movie? We will see what happens!