IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

This morning, Bea brought in something quite interesting- a pomegranate! Many friends had never tried one and were excited to taste the juicy seeds. After tasting, we noticed how many extra seeds were left inside. Bea immediately had an idea- “We need to put them in our grow lab!” All of our friends agreed. We planted three separate containers several pomegranate seeds in each. This led us to a conversation we had last week, about planting other things. Last week, Tajanaye had a wonderful suggestion- to plant seeds and grow seed starters for a special sale and to raise money for our garden. We revisited this conversation after planting the pomegranate seeds, and Tajanaye remarked, “We can sell the seeds and people can give them to grandmas who are sick or people can hang them on their porch.”

Regan added, “If people have a family member that doesn’t have any food, we can give it to them and them can keep it.”

“If someone was sick like your brother or sister you could give it to them as a present.” Bea

Makenzi added, “It would be so kind. So kind. I would like to have a selling party, after our author celebration. Maybe we can put a lot of water to them and they will grow.”

This being said, we decided we would plant an entire package of carrot seeds in Keurig cups in our grow lab and get them started for our sale. Lucas brought up that he believed using these K cups was recycling.

“I think its recycling. I think I saw a book at Mrs. Clark’s class about rethink, reduce, recycle.” Lucas

“I was in Mrs. Clark’s class last year! We made up a song for recycling. It means you reuse, rethink and use it for something else instead of storing it in the trash.” BreAnna

These are such powerful connections for the kids to make. I am excited for exploring other green ways to enhance our garden this year.

We had another great day of building our mouse city, as well. The kids really worked as team to share supplies and negotiate tasks to get done for their buildings and stick to their plans.

Tags: collaboration, garden, geometry, problem solving, recycling, responsible

Thursday morning, we had another note from Sam and mouse! He asked us to build a city for him and his family with all of the things a regular city would have. This led us to make a list of building we knew that helped people in our community (beauty shop, school, library, museum, school, houses, etc)

Later on the in the day, we chose which areas of the city we would prefer to work on. Some friends are working with partners, some are working on their own. We talked about the idea of planning out our buildings before we just build, so we practiced thoughtfully drawing our buildings and labeling which shapes we would be needing in the building phase.

Tags: collaboration, geometry, problem solving, project

How does sound travel? We learned sound travels via vibrations. Vibrations in the air are called sound waves. Today we experimented with sound by creating cup phones and talking to our neighbors! Here is a snapshot of our conversation after our experience.

We made cups and we talked in them and another person put their cup to their ear. Cariah

We made some echos in the cup. Hold it tight! Greyson

It works because of the vibrations on the strong. Lucas

Why do we need the cups? Could we just use the string? Mrs. Goldsmith

The cups are actually for you to put your eat and mouth on so you can make the echo sound come in. And when youre like on the other side its kinda similar. We don’t know how it does it. Its like magic. Dylan

Was it more important to be the listener or the talker today? Mrs. Argus

Listener, because you have to actually like, be quiet to hear… Dylan

Yeah, like you listen! Beatrice

If somebody’s talking, you don’t talk through it. Dylan

Listening is more important because you can learn more about the person that is talking. J’Den

An amazing conversation. 🙂

Tags: collaboration, curious, problem solving, project, thinking

This morning, friends were invited to a new provocation- the human ear. Various pictures of ears were placed throughout the room and friends were invited to draw what they saw. Each time our friends our invited to do an observational drawing such as this, Mr. Henderson and I are blown away by the attention to detail. The pictures are incredible. After our drawings, we sat as a class and talked about the concept of listening. What exactly is listening? Some friends shared…

Listening is listening and listening is respecting. Miles

Not to yell, but to listen. Cariah

With someone is talking, you don’t play. Messi

Listening is listening to a friend and your mom. Cariah.

You have to listen! Makenzi

Listening to them when they are talking. Lucas

Shouting is not listening. Makenzi

I just wanted to say that’s an agreement for peace. Cariah

Listening is hearing. Mrs. Argus

We will revisit this concept tomorrow with more provocations on sound. As teacher researchers, we are wondering if giving listening and sound significant and obvious roles in the classroom will improve our communication as a class.

Tags: capable, communication, friendship, problem solving, relationships

The other day, Maria and her mom brought in some extra Day Lilies to share with our school. Today, we learned that Day Lilies are perennials which means they will grow back year after year! We learned how to split the Day Lilies and about a group of friends went outside to plant them by our William A. Bell memorial. It looks great!

While we were out there, we separated the Day Lilies into 10 plants. Our friends started talking math as we lined up the perennials…

Lets see, we have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten! Maria

Hmmm five and five. We need to do five on each side. Regan

How do you know five and five? Mrs. Argus

Because five plus five equals ten! Five on each side! Messi

Perfect!

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