IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

The day was perfect! All day long, classes came and supported one another in preparing and planting the garden. We tilled, mixed soil, planted, mulched, and watered. We were so lucky the weather was spectacular, too. The kids seemed so happy and proud of their work. Such a wonderful day.

Tags: Butler, friendship, garden, image of the child, project, responsible

Tomorrow, all four classes will be planting in our three large garden boxes in the side yard of the school. We will be doing this rain or shine (providing no lightening or thunder). Please make sure your child is dressed in clothing that can get a little dirty! If you have gardening tools to share, make sure they are labeled with your name on them and send them with your child. We look forward to this very fun and dirty day!

One of our garden boxes.

Tags: Butler, friendship, garden, image of the child, project, responsible

Miss Christen from Sharp community garden comes for a visit!

Yesterday, we were visited by a friend from Sharp Community Garden, Miss Christen. Miss Christen talked to us about how her organization set up a community garden to support families that didn’t have fresh fruits and vegetables. We learned that the garden is right over by Butler University (across from St. Thomas) and anyone can volunteer time to work and eat from the garden. We had a long list of questions for Miss Christen about how to go about starting a garden. How much should we water? How long will ours take to grow? Does her garden have bees and worms? Should we plant everyday? What should we do about weeds? Miss Christen was even kind enough to invite us to see her garden and help with planting in a few weeks. She offered to come assist us with ours as well. (We are currently waiting to hear back from our Butler friends in the leadership class about funding for some garden boxes and garden equipment- very exciting!)

One of our questions for Miss Christen was where to put our garden. She suggested somewhere where there is lots of sun (at least six hours), good soil, and water can get to it easily. After her suggestions, we decided to take a walk outside our building into the “yard” area on the north side of the building and look for space. After exploring for quite a bit, we found a space we felt comfortable with! Ruth commented there were hardly any weeds in that relative area. David said that there was plenty of light and it would get lots of rain. For the rest of our time, we decided to play and explore our new found garden space more. As this was happening, some very interesting things happened. First, friends started collecting weeds to protect our new garden space. Children started running at full speed down a sloped space and grabbing weeds as they ran. Ruth explained, “Its a game- I call it Weed Runner! Try to not stop while you grab them!” More and more friends joined in on the fun.

Friends enjoy getting to know our garden space on a beautiful day.

Monica collects weeds from Ruth’s Weed Runner game.

Hutton pulls weeds to improve our garden space. He likes Weed Runner!

 Friends also began placing their handfuls of weeds in a rectangular shape around our proposed garden sight to mark its location. This led to a class discussion on shapes today and what shapes our garden boxes could be in. We went back outside again today and showed one another shapes that our garden could be in.

A heart shaped garden box.

What about doing a triangle for our garden box?

Should we do a rectangle for our garden box?

Cameron shows us what a crescent shape is.

Tags: arithmetic, collaboration, garden, image of the child, problem solving, thinking

Aidan explains his thinking.

Our class created hundreds chart.

 

 

 

 

 

     

 

 

 

One of the things the kids like to do in the morning is read the morning message and count our positive points. It has become a ritual for many friends in our room once they have gotten unpacked and settled in. Today, Aidan did something really special. He counted our positive points, and counted 74. Then, without prompting, he walked right over to our hundreds chart, found the number74 and proceeded to count up to 100. He then announced to me, “Mrs. Argus, we only need 26 more positive points until 100!” I asked him how he discovered his conclusion. He then articulately talked me through his thinking process and how he came to use our hundreds chart. Aidan’s discovery was so special that he then shared it during the sharing portion of our morning meeting. The class brainstormed other ways we could use the hundreds chart to problem solve. What a neat discovery, Aidan!

 

Friends present, "How Bella Lost Her Moo!"

 

For the past couple weeks, some of our friends have been reading a story called How Bella Lost Her Moo. It has lots of different animal parts that are fun to read and the kids decided they each wanted to read a seprate part when we would read in a group. One day, a friend suggested, “We should do this as a play!” The rest of the friends loved the idea and we began to prepare to present it to our class. We made puppets out of paper bags and practiced reciting our lines clearly and with emotion. Today, our friends presented the play to the rest of the class. Everyone was so proud and impressed with our performers! We will have to do more reader’s theater in the future- we have some wonderful actors!

 

 

Tags: arithmetic, capable, collaboration, creativity, curious, image of the child, problem solving

Enjoying some time together at school.

The Beery family works on a sculpture.

I also had to share how much I enjoyed our family night last night. It was so great to see families engaging with one another and sharing the accomplishments of our children. The most powerful moment for me was when the children shared their family’s sculptures about

Tags: family focus, image of the child