IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Our first week of school went by so fast!  I hope that your children came home excited to tell you all the various things we did from the read alouds to the three different workshops to free choice!  We focused a lot of the week on procedures and getting to know each other.  Next week we will continue to work on procedures while at school, and I hope to begin conferencing with each child while doing Reader’s and Writer’s Workshop.

On Monday, I will be sending home one notebook which will be our journal to write back and forth during the year.  I will begin the journal with just letting you all know how your child is doing in school so far.  Then, you are more than welcome to write back as often or not often as you would like.   I hope that this is something that you will enjoy throughout the year!

Mrs. Bucher 🙂

Malachi showing me his flower and sun he drew during one of the literacy stations!

Emily and Geneva preparing for their bubblegum store!

Sydney and Cha'kyra's house they built during free choice!

We have discovered that our class has a great interest in creating and flying our own airplanes. After watching the children create all week, I decided that we would take this interest and pair it together with our interest in length and measurement. Today during Math Workshop, one of our friends, Hutton, showed the entire class how to make a paper airplane. We worked together to help friends that were struggling and made sure that each child had an airplane. Then we decorated and personalized our airplanes so we knew which one belonged to us. We then decided to take turns flying our airplane to see which could go the farthest. We started with a question, “How will we know which is farthest?” Some ideas were to measure in miles, floor tiles, and with kids. McKinley brought up inches. We then took a look at a 6 inch ruler. Regan said, “That’s not big enough silly!” So we pulled out a 12 inch ruler. We decided it was still not going to be big enough to measure our flights. Regan then found the large, 60 inch measuring tape in my basket. The class decided it would be sufficient to get us started. We sat as a class and counted down a takeoff for each child (“One, Two THREEEE!!!”) and watched the planes soar. Some of the planes made it past 60 inches. We then had to problem solve as to how to measure past our measuring tape by adding another large ruler. The kids wrote their distances on a big chart and we discussed the results afterwards. Make sure to take a look at your child’s airplane in thier take home folder this weekend. They did a great job with this activity!

"My airplane is pink. Isn't it nice?" - Messi

Cameron and Dylan preparing their airplanes for flight.

Take a peek at what we have done over the past two days!  As we start Reader’s and Writer’s Workshop the kids are really enjoying themselves!  They now come in asking to write books and reread books that we have read together.  In addition, I think their favorite time of the current day is Free Choice.  We have now opened up paint and it is the class favorite!

As school begins, the Lab School is working on building a community. One of the ways we are building a community in our classroom is through creating and honoring Agreements for Peace. As a class, we sat down together and talked about what a peaceful being is and what a peacemaker is. We talked about ways that we could show peacefulness in our classroom and came up with our Agreements for Peace. Below is our list:

Share.

Be kind.

Listen to who is talking.

Take care of our materials.

As the school year progresses, we may see that we need more agreements added or changed. These decesions will be made as a class after thoughtful discussion.

Kaitlyn writes some of our Agreements for Peace.