IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

We are about 3 months into our recycling program!  I was so overjoyed today to see how excited the kids were to collect recycling!  I thought after a few weeks of doing it the kids would be bored or tired of walking to all the classrooms in the school.  Well let me tell you I was wrong!  Today, as we lined up to recycle, the kids cheered!  David even said, “We are recycling superheros!  We are saving the planet!”  As we walked outside, Dorothy made up a recycling song.

Our recycling project is going so well that the kids are now finding more ways to save the environment…

We had a great time this afternoon at our Friendship Party.  The kids made a friendship link where they wrote about good friends.  They also measured hearts with candy conversation hearts!  Thank you to Mrs. Carrel for helping us this afternoon!

David is measuring his hearts!

Olivia and Selah are working on their friendship link together.

Also, don’t forget!  There is a Parent Organization Meeting this Thursday, February 16th at 6:00pm at the school!  We hope to see you there!

Today we began our letter to the Mayor of Indianapolis, Mr. Greg Ballard.  The kids were very excited to start so a small group of friends helped me during our Free Choice Time.   This is only the beginning of the letter.  We will go through probably 2 different revisions before we send it off.  Here is a sneak peak of part of our letter:

Dear Mr. Ballard,

…We share the world with everyone.  The whole world should recycle.  Also, please do not cut down trees.  Because our air is not going to be healthy.  We can reuse paper, maybe scrap paper, to help people….

Love,

Mrs. Clark’s Class

Just a reminder, Family Night is tomorrow night from 6:00-7:00 at the school!  This family night will focus on our message center and writing messages to each other!

As we were working on our working on our morning message today, some friends asked some questions that lead into a discussion about letters. We work with and explore letters everyday in our classroom. However, students verbalized a new observation today, that no one had ever shared with the whole class…”Some uppercase letters look the same as their lowercase letter, and some look different.” I thought this was a great observation, excited that it was a conclusion they came to on their own! I offered up a continued observation of letters as a free choice, and by the end of the day, students had sorted out all the letters that look the same in upper and lower case form, and all that look different!

"Different" letters

Aaliyah and Leah sort the "same" letters during free choice time.

Other excitement today, revolved around our earthquake drill…

Paiton, Jo'Vyon, and DayTwon demonstrate how to properly protect yourself in the rare case of an earthquake.

And lastly, we started a new scientific exploration today, considering how observation can help us identify things. Students were given a notecard and a toy car. They were asked to draw their car. Then after a minute of drawing. I collected their cars, mixed them all up, and redistributed them. Students had to use their observations from their drawings to explain how they knew that their new car was not the same as their original.

Jermaine, Paiton, Jamaria, Zakeyah, Aaliyah, and William observe their 2nd round of cars.