IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

The time has flown by and I cannot believe that we are going to be on Spring Break after tomorrow! First of all, I wanted to say that I have been having so much fun learning about space with the students. I love that we are in this environment where we are all learning about space and all that it offers together.

The space suits are done! We are going to begin to put them on tomorrow and take some pictures, but the class picture will be taken after break when we have all of the children present.

In Math Workshop this week we have been exploring base ten blocks and why we use them. The children at first had a hard time understanding what “ones”, “tens” and “hundreds” meant but are slowly beginning to understand what it looks like when you break the number up.

We have started getting some spacesuits back from getting embroidered and oh my goodness…they look amazing! Pictures coming soon!

The research the children are doing on planets is just fantastic! Today some friends used the computer to seek out some of the answers to their research questions. When we were sharing out the information we learned, a lot of friends were sharing how long it took their planet to orbit the sun. Oliver said it took 30 Earth Years for Saturn to orbit the sun. Heaven said it took 88 days for Mercury to orbit the sun. Then I asked why that was the case. Why does it take Saturn so long to orbit but Mercury not that long? After some friends shared their ideas we got up and made the question a little more visual.

I had Heaven be the sun. Oliver stood where Saturn should be. Emily stood where Mercury should be. Jonah stood where Uranus should be. Then they started to orbit the “sun”. Jamari noticed Emily got around the circle quickly, but Jonah was only about half way around the sun. Then everyone started sharing that the farther away you are from the sun the longer the orbit! What great connections the children are making!

This afternoon, our classroom turned into a forest!  The past few weeks we have been talking about the different parts of trees and today we finally put it all together.  Each student became a tree!  We had paper bags that represented the trunk, mulch that represented the bark, and yarn that represented the roots.  While the kids did like their vests, I could tell their necklaces were a the favorite!  They each had brown yarn (the branches) that was strung with leaves!  Here are few pictures from our forest!

Reid, Nytaiya, and Sophia are busy showing off their trees!

Dorothy and Tylisha are acting like they are trees!

We love trees!

Today began our first official day of recording our findings on the particular planet we chose Monday. I used the questions that the children came up with yesterday and made a table for the children to fill out. We reviewed the questions and talked about how we would figure out those responses. Then they broke out into their groups. I was blown away with how eager the children were in finding facts about their planet that they could add to their research paper! They were raising their hands left and right to tell me what they had found!

After the children were done we gathered together and discussed any new information we learned while researching. This is a snippet of the conversation:

“Saturn has 60 moons!”-Oliver
“I thought Saturn has 61 moons.”-Jonah
“In Oliver’s research he found that Saturn had 60 moons so we will honor that right now, but maybe we need to research some more to see what is the most accurate information.”-Mrs. Bucher
“It takes 1 year for Earth to go around the sun.”-Saa
“And what is another word for “go around the sun?”-Mrs. Bucher
“ORBIT!”-Many friends
“Mercury is the first planet.”-Heaven
“The earth travels around the sun.”-DeOnna
“Venus has dusty rocks on it.”-Selam
“It takes about 84 Earth years for Uranus to go around the sun.”-Jonah
“That is long!”-Jamari
“Why does it take that long to get to Uranus?”-Bucher
“Because it is so far away!”-Jonah

What great thinking! They are already learning so much about the planets so I am excited to see and hear what else they learn about their planet.

Today was a wonderful day! There were some changes to the day like in the afternoon we are strictly doing project work now instead of having project work and free choice. I began this afternoon’s project work time by showing the friends a stack of books all about planets. Then, I asked them how we were going to learn about the books. Selam suggested that we split up into groups and learn about the planets. So, we split up into 8 groups. Each group got to choose which planet they were going research. Then they took their books and began reading them. After some time researching their planet, we got back together as a group and talked about the experience, and I asked if anyone had any questions they wanted to figure out while studying their planet. Some questions were as followed:

“Why does the planet spin?”-Isaac
“Why is there a storm on Jupiter?”-Emily
“Why do the planets have their names?”-Sydney
“Why is Earth so close to the sun?”-Heaven
“How many years would it take to get to Uranus?”-Jonah

I loved hearing all of the really deep questions so tomorrow and the rest of the week we are going to begin answering some of those questions by researching them in books and on the Internet.

Today we were lucky to have Blue II and Trip (Blue III) come and pay us a visit from Butler! We were so excited to see the real mascots of the Bulldogs. Mark,the owner of the dogs, answered some really great questions and gave us some insight on the two dogs. The children while answering question, listening, and drawing a picture of the dogs also got to pet them! SO FUN!