IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

The kids have been so excited all week about meeting again in our friendship circle. During calendar today, Miss Schmidt asked some of our friends what day was today. Angela told her it was Friday and said she knew because, “It is friendship circle day!”

During friendship circle, our two classes celebrated several friends that got to add pieces of fabric to the friendship loom. They got to do this by acting like a friend throughout the week.

Sydney and Emily share a handshake with our friendship circle.

After we recognized our special friends, Mrs. Bucher, Miss Schmidt and I asked the kids about special handshakes. What handshakes had they worked on this week? Did they have any prospective ideas for our friendship circle handshake? Many pairs shared what they had worked on this week. We saw many different kinds of handshakes, including some with hand clapping, hugs, noises, and counting. Next week, we will talk about deciding on a friendship circle handshake we can do each time we meet. We are so excited to see where this time leads us!

David and Da'Sean share a cool greeting with us.

Tags: creativity, friendship, project

Aidan counts the friendship links. Does it match the number of pictures?

What a great day! I have to comment on how enthusiastic and well behaved the kids have been since we have been back from break. Today was no exception. Before break,  we began creating a board with pictures on it of people in our class showing friendship. There is a sign that reads, “What is friendship?” We also started keeping a chain which has descriptions of each friendship moment on it that is documented. This morning when he walked in, Aidan noticed almost immediately that there were new pictures. He and Monica talked about the new pictures. “But it they don’t match the chain, Mrs. Argus!” Aidan exclaimed. I asked him what he meant. “There are only six chains, but there’s eight pictures.” I asked Aidan how many chains with descriptions we needed to add. He counted the chains again, then the pictures. Then he looked at his hand and held out two fingers, one at a time, “Seven, eight. We need two more chains! I counted on!” Later in the day, Miss Schmidt led a discussion with our friends about both new pictures. One was Angela helping her friend Michael zip up his coat for recess. Another was friends helping assemble our unifix cubes in two groups of five, to equal ten unifix cubes-such great teamwork. We wrote a brief description of each event on a link, and added it to the chain.

David points out a new friendship picture to the class.

Our trip to Clowes Hall today was a lot of fun. The kids were excited to see Butler University and asked a lot of questions about college on the bus ride there and back. We saw the play, A Caterpillar, a Bear, and a Moonby Eric Carle which showcased many of our favorite Eric Carle characters through really neat looking black light puppets.

Carriea shares Angela's heavy load to the library.

Tags: Butler, friendship, project, relationships

The class in front of an Indiana nature mural.

Friends watch the airplanes take off and land from the balcony.

Tags: curious, field trip, Indianapolis Airport, inspiration, project

In addition to our Block A friends from Butler who come every Wednesday, we have another Butler class who visits us on a regular basis. They are part of an arts integration class through the college of education and are learning how to integrate the arts into our project work and regular curriculum. Every week, a small group of these students pull a group of our classmates and work with them on something related to flight. Last week, some of our friends learned an awesome song about a Bi-Plane. Today, our friends experimented with creating airplane wings and talking about the concept of lift when the wing was held in front of a fan- incredible!

Tags: capable, curious, design, paper airplane, project, think

Friends look for similarities between their artwork and the photo.

Our inspiration.

Yesterday, Mrs. Kary shared one of the neatest pictures I have ever seen-a picture of the sky filled with jet streams from all different directions. She commented that Regan had seen it outside and gotten really excited and it turns out other friends saw it too! After getting a copy of this neat photograph, I shared it with the kids. They were  inspired to re-create this picture and we decided to use white paint and blue paper to create skies. We marble painted with a marble covered in paint, and rolled the marble carefully over the paper in a little tray. Some of our re-creations look very similar to the original inspiration picture, some are much different! We noted different shapes and symbols that were created by this unique art method too.

Messi liked the technique so much he made several masterpieces!

Ruth gives marble painting a try.

Tags: art, inspiration, project