IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Tags: community, friendship

As you know, we have been watching three different lima beans grow- one in soil, one in sand, and one in a paper towel. After carefully watering for a week, we have started to see some results! We noticed that our lima bean seed in the paper towel has split open, and we can see a tiny sprout. We also noticed that the lima bean in the sand looks like it may be emerging to the top, by note of a small bump at the top of the sand. As scientists, we want to record all of our observations in our lima bean experiment. Today, we started a small journal where we draw pictures of each seed in their growing medium. We will document the seed growth each day, noting the fastest, healthiest, etc. It was not only exciting to see how much detail the kids put into their drawings, but also their use of adjectives and words to help them describe in their small notebooks what was happening in each picture.

Tags: curious, garden, project

Our day was filled with science today in preparation for our field trip.

During morning meeting, we tested our hypotheses from yesterday about the different liquids in the jar.

A few students decided we should try mixing salt, water, and glue and then put it on paper to see how it dries.  They want to compare our papers to the note we got to see if we can learn any more about what is in the leak.

We had another science meeting where we worked on reading thermometers accurately.  The scientists discovered that thermometers are similar to number lines and you skip count by 2 to figure out the exact temperature.

This week, we have been discussing how to use critiques that friends give us to revise our writing. This is an important part of the writing process and something we want students to understand!

On Tuesday, students were divided into groups and asked to create an observational drawings of various objects around the classroom. They worked very hard on these and they turned out great. We talked about this as the first step of a three part process that we would utilize when creating these sketches.

With the help of our Butler friends on Wednesday, we critiqued each others work. Each child offered two specific praises for their partners work and one thing they wished for. This reinforced the idea of constructive criticism, while still offering students some areas for improvement.

Today, we revisited our drawings and revised the work based on what our parter offered us as a wish. The students really took their feedback to heart and the results were impressive! Next week, we will learn how to transfer these ideas from drawing and use the during story workshop to help us become better authors! This work is displayed outside our room, so stop by and see!

Today we began making our wind chime made out of materials you sent in. The children really were interested in making this representative of all of the children in class so we put A LOT of things on it. We will finish it tomorrow and then put it up so we can all be reminded of this project!

The children discussed today making a puppet show about hurricanes and hurricane safety. They remembered that Nicole Misencik taught us about tornado safety so they wanted to teach you all about hurricane safety. Next week we decided that we probably need to research more about hurricanes since our puppet show is focused on it.

So excited about this puppet adventure!!