IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Last week, some of the students were wondering if our colored water from painting with watercolors would change the temperature of the water.  Today I asked the students: Does color affect temperature? Many of our friends explored the water before we added food coloring.   They recorded the temperature of the water in their science notebooks.  The conversations between peers included showing each other the difference between Celsius and Fahrenheit and challenging each others’ thoughts on what temperature the water was.  In morning meeting everyone used their science notebooks and we discussed theories about how the food coloring would affect the water’s temperature.  Many students agreed that it depended on the temperature of the food coloring while some thought certain colors would change the temperature more than other colors.  We explored the food dye and realized at the end that we need to come up with some agreements for our science explorations.  Some ideas that the students have already include taking care of the science tools and taking turns with the materials and being careful with the exploration.  For example, students realized putting our hands in the water may change the temperature.  We will continue to explore the idea of science agreements this week!

I loved being able to see how deep friends were thinking about their math today! Friends were making connections, feeling confident, and working on their math pocket. I do not know if I have shared information about the math pockets with you, but the math pockets are something the children can work on once they have completed their notebooks. The things inside their math pockets are filling in hundred charts with missing numbers, ordering numbers 1-20, tracing numbers, etc. Whatever they need in terms of number work, we give them. The children really enjoy working on this because it is something that we do not get to do often because they usually are still working on their notebooks when math workshop is finished. Anywho…just wanted to share how proud I am of their thinking!

Tylisha and Selam doing boat pose.

Raki and Dorothy doing the open heart pose.

Maxwell and Miles doing the boat pose.

A part of our day every day is yoga.  On Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday the kids go to Mrs. William’s classroom for yoga. On Mondays and Tuesdays we do it in our classroom together.  Today, we worked on some of the things that Mrs. Williams taught us last week.  We reviewed our partner poses; boat, open heart, and see saw.  I was so proud of the way the kids were able to work together and get along with on another.  Even if someone messed up it wasn’t a big deal and they could try again.  I love how our community is working together!

Each Monday, we are lucky enough to have time in our school library! Mrs. Thomas, our media specialist, reads to us each week and then gives us time to check out a book. Students have the option of bringing library books home, but they have to come back each Monday! We have been using this time to practice selecting a just right level book for us.

Last week, we started to read a book about Sam the library mouse, who makes his home on the shelves between the books! Today, while Makayla was searching for a book to check out, she found a stack of books that Sam had written just for us! Students loved to read this story by our. Ew friend and think he is an incredible author (with very good handwriting for a mouse!). Ask your child about their library experience and encourage them to bring their books home to read to you.

Reminder, Scholastic book fair orders are due back next Friday, October 5th!

Andrea with her book from Sam.

Madeline, Journey, and Christian searching for them book.

Friends waiting in line to check out their book.

Today Miss Jeffrey led a wonderful lesson on chunking words. We call it Chunky Monkey. So far we have discussed Ready Rooster, Stretchy Snake, and now we learning about Chunky Monkey. These are all strategies to help us figure out words when we are having trouble reading them. Chunky Monkey helps us figure out an unknown word by looking at known words in the unknown word. For example, “jumping” We might know the word “jump” and we might know the ending “ing” so we chunk those words together to form the word “jumping” It was great to see so many children catch on while Miss Jeffrey was using snap cubes to form different words! We will continue to explore this idea the rest of the week as well as beyond this week.

This week we are going to focus on learning about thunderstorms. If we are going to communicate about storms to others during our weather report then we have to know more about them. So, today we did an experiment where the children filled a clear plastic cup with water. Then they added shaving cream to the top of it. The last thing the children did was add blue food coloring to the top of the shaving cream and watched what happened…Selah described it as the “rain” was heavier then the “clouds” so the rain fell down into the water!! I then asked if that was how clouds were, and Isaac responded that the clouds absorb the rain and then the rain becomes to heavy for it so it falls. I was really blown away by how this experiment as well as discussion helped the children communicate what clouds do! We will continue to do this experiment throughout the rest of the week so that all of the children can participate in it, and let me tell you there were so many friends that kept coming up asking “Is it my turn?” So, I look forward to seeing and hearing the many other thoughts that come from the children!