IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Today we had a wonderful day- a harvest and celebration! In th afternoon, our Butler Friends and Mr. Henderson led three small groups that harvested, prepared and cooked food for our class to share together. Miss Saks and friends created cinnamon muffins with eggs from the chickens, Miss Bickel and friends harvested and cooked brussels sprouts from our garden, and Mr. Henderson and Miss Weese and friends brewed lemon tea with fresh lemon balm from Mrs. Argus’ home garden!

One of the things we are focusing on as we begin this food/eating/garden project and experience is how food brings us together as a community. While enjoying our food together, we had discussions on friendship and how it felt to prepare for and have food prepared for us by friends. We talked about how it made us feel to enjoy food together and spend time with one another in this way. Friends said they felt…

special

yummy

fuzzy inside

important

happy

We will continue to investigate the ideas of harvest, feast, and community during our time together at school. We are looking forward to what conversations come from our big garden day Wednesday and our field trip to the orchard Friday!

Tags: chickens, community, friendship, garden, project

This week, it is our responsibility to be chicken and garden stewards! We went outside and to our delight, there were 6 eggs to collect from our girls. After we fed the chickens, we took a look at the garden and noticed all the changes from the beginning of the year. We noticed many of the plants have gone to bolt (have flowered) and are about done producing. We noticed some plants still need to be harvested and may need a little more time (peppers!). We talked about what needs to be done this week to take care of the garden. Some suggestions were:

weeding

pulling out bolted plants

watering

making pesto from basil

We plan to act on this list tomorrow. The garden is such a wonderful space for us. We are so lucky to have it. 🙂

Tags: chickens, curious, garden, responsible

Friends wave to the “girls”!

This week, we have been in charge of taking care of the chickens- we’re the chicken stewards! Today, we were able to collect 3 eggs from the “girls”. When we came inside for math workshop, we began an impromptu conversation about what to do with the eggs we collected. Messi suggested baking a cake. Regan suggested giving them to Miss Judy, our cafeteria lady. Some friends liked the idea of giving them to Miss Judy but weren’t sure if they wanted to give them all away. We talked about how it might feel good to give to someone else. Regan mentioned that Miss Judy may need all of the eggs to make pancakes for breakfast. Another friend, J’Den, suggested something else.

How about we give her half? J’Den

What is half? Mrs. Argus

Like not all of them, but some. Half! J’Den

If you go, one for me, one for you, one for me, one for you, its half! Messi

But how do we know what half is? We only have three right now. We may get 10 by the end of the week, what would half be? Mrs. Argus

I have an idea, we should do this as like a math workshop problem. J’Den

Going off of J’Den’s suggestion, we grabbed a manipulative (the bears) and closed our eyes and pretended they were eggs. I laid out 6 bears in two rows, 3 and 3. We talked about how half would be one of the rows. We then laid out 8 bears and talked about how one row of 4 would be half. We practiced spotting half in 10 bears. The kids were then challenged with another question…

But what if we only get 9 eggs this week? Mrs. Argus

You give Miss Judy half! See, these for us, these for her… uh oh… J’Den

Its not fair! Beatrice

It doesn’t work. We should probably give Miss Judy more then us.  J’Den

When you can’t divide it fairly, its an odd. Fairly is an even. Mrs. Argus

Odds and evens! Odds and evens! Lucas

We then practiced noticing when numbers could be divided fairly, and when they couldn’t, and described them as either odds or evens.

J’Den talks about odds and evens with the egg problem.

Mr. Henderson and I also noticed a new interest in our classroom- dinosaurs! Throughout last week, friends were making dinosaur puppets and using a few small plastic dinosaurs to tell stories during story workshop. We noticed a lot of conversation circulating around this idea too. Today, we put out pictures of dinosaur bones with some clay and asked the kids to explore the clay. Many friends were inspired to create parts of dinosaurs and even eggs! Addie shared a really neat connection during the day as well- both chickens and dinosaurs lay eggs! I wonder if we will find any other connections…

Addie points out her noticing in a dinosaur book. Great observation!

Tags: arithmetic, capable, chickens, collaboration, curious, problem solving

Friends write letters to Mrs. Obama.

Last week, we read a book about school gardens. The kids had so many connections to make with the book it was incredible. One of the things the book mentioned was that Mrs. Obama was a huge supporter of victory gardens and school gardens. One of our friends suggested, “We should tell her about our garden!” The rest of the class was very enthusiastic about this idea. This morning, we made a list of things we could tell Mrs. Obama about our garden. We also decided we would like to try to convince her to come to the Lab School and teach her about worm composting and our chickens. We are working on first drafts and eventually will turn these into final copies we feel proud of to send to the White House. Who knows what will happen?

We are also exploring the world of 3 dimensional shapes this week. Today, friends were invited to create different types of shapes. We then explored their attributes as a group and categorized them. We ended up coming up with two large categories that our shapes could fall into.

Zek and his group work to create 3 dimensional shapes.

Tags: chickens, collaboration, creativity, garden, project

Is our garden growing?

Cameron and Lucas measure the basil.

Some of our friends and our new outdoor compost bin.

Mrs. Argus and one of our beloved friends!

Regan is picking up some very chicken-like behavior… and we like it!

David and Cameron read together and ask questions about their bug.

Tags: chickens, garden, project, responsible