IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

On Friday we made pesto. It was delicious! That morning, we learned how to properly harvest basil from our garden. We referred to our video from the day prior about how to make pesto and made sure we had all of the ingredients. All of our friends helped either adding, measuring, or counting ingredients to make sure the pesto was just right! Mr. Henderson and I were so pleased to see all of the kids try the pesto and most really enjoy it. Mr. Henderson led a great conversation after we enjoyed our pesto about how food brings people together.

Do you think that food brings us together? Mr. Henderson

Yeah, cuz like, if you try different things you might like it. But If i asked Mrs. Argus whats her favorite cereal, she may say something. And if I asked Amiah what hers is, its different. They can still be friends. J’Den

I ask my momma can I get some food, and then the food makes you healthy and strong. Makenzi

Like we all have different opinions, like different things. Lucas

Like when you have a night, like Mimi, on Christmas Night, she brings us together because she makes a special dinner for us. And we all come there and she is sharing the food, and that brings us all together. Addie

Tags: capable, cooking, creativity, garden

Today, we put our plan into action- we cleaned up the garden! We put our gardening gloves on and talked about the difference between weeds and plants and went to it. Old plants were put into the compost bin to rot and become fresh organic matter and soil that will help our garden grow next year. Friends loved getting their hands dirty and doing some hard work! Mr. Henderson and I are finding that our class has a special interest in our outdoor space- just like last year! This is interesting because gardening was one of our large class project. We are wondering if the children will become more and more interested and this profound affection for the garden will develop into something more…

At recess today, the kids continued discussion about living things in the garden and dug up worms! Many, many friends, including ones that are not in our class, were enthralled with the idea of finding worms and placing them in the “worm hotel”. Some friends from last year even shared that they knew that worms could be beneficial to our garden.

Tags: capable, garden, inspiration, responsible

Tags: capable, dinosaurs, project

Friends work togther to build half meter long cube sticks.

I have some awesome learning to share from Wednesday. Wednesday morning, our class resumed our conversation on how to figure out how big our T-Rex was in real life. Several friends showed us how they had figured out how to mark a half meter by creating sticks of unifix cubes that were 50 cm long. We knew it was important to have this measurement, but we weren’t sure what to do next. We decided to take a closer look at our picture we were working from with the scale. We re-read that 1cm = .5 meters. Lucas asked, “Well how many centimeters is the picture?” Beatrice and Ayden knew, “21!” Then Lucas suggested, “Let’s make 21 sticks and lay them out. That’s how big!” Friends agreed that this would be the best way to represent our T- Rex. They demonstrated teamwork as the entire class enthusiastically began building sticks of equal lengths. Friends problem solved on how to check to make sure the sticks were equal. Some chose to re-measure them with a ruler, some compared them to others, some insisted on counting them each time and made sure they each had the same amount. When we finally had 21, we had a decesion to make. “What now?”

Teamwork!

Addie looks down the row, its getting longer!

Going off of Lucas’ suggestion, friends began taking turns connecting each of the pieces to create one, long line. The kids were paitient as we fixed breaks and troubleshooted directional problems. The cubes began to extend beyond our carpet area, past our word wall, and beyond. Miles enthusiastically predicted, “Its going to go out of the room! Its so big!” And Miles was right, our T-Rex ended up being SO big that it extended out of the classroom. WOW! After admiring our work in the morning, we decided to switch out the breakable cubes for something a little more permanent- tape. We laid down tape in place of the cubes to mark how long the T-Rex was and had fun decorating it with T-Rex-es and dinosaur words. Make sure you come check it out next time you are at school!

Longer!

BreAnna adds a half meter to the dinosaur.

Right out the door!

Tags: arithmetic, capable, collaboration, problem solving, project

Lucas and Jackson explore Dino World.

Dylan, Ayden, Jackson, and Hutton enjoy playing with the dinosaurs in Dino World.

Beatrice and Maria use watercolor to represent dinosaurs.

Addie paints a water dinosaur.

Today, our class looked an 8.5 x 11 picture of a T-Rex from the Children’s Museum. We talked about how the picture was just a representation of how big the actual dinosaur was- we knew he was much bigger than the size of the paper! Mr. Henderson and I challenged the kids with a simple question-  how could you show us how big a T-Rex really was? We pointed out there was a scale on the picture of 1centimeters = .5 meters and allowed the children to explore various measurement tools in our classroom. Some friends went straight to the rulers and yardsticks, some went for more non-conventional forms of measurement: using bears, unifix cubes, and looking closely at our dinosaur toys. One of the most exciting things about an inquiry like this is the conversation that happens while we are wrestling with new ideas. Many of our friends chose to work in pairs or small groups and talk through their thinking with one another. While we didn’t quite solve the mystery today, we will resume our work tomorrow and pick up where our thinking left off!

Here are a few snippets of insight from our friends.

I’m trying to see how many bones he has to measure him. 20 bones! He has 20 bones! Beatrice

If a T-Rex is a meter, that means he would be 100 centimeters. Lucas

I think he would have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 centimeters. Because that’s half of this stick. Makenzi (talking about half of the ruler’s 30 centimeters AND making the connection that we need half of something- incredible!)

We have to see how close it can be to the cubes. Dylan

Its very interesting! Jackson

J’Den measures our picture.

Maria and Amiah use the plastic dinosaur figurines to get a measurement.

Beatrice checks her measurements.

Jackson, Dylan, and Regan are on to something… they line up the yard sticks along the floor…

More friends work together to line the sticks along the floor.

Tags: arithmetic, capable, collaboration, problem solving, project