Watchya Doin' Wedesday... homework and dinner

Happy Hump Day! Truth be told, I hate that saying, but this week it fits! These kiddos are keeping us on our toes this week! Sometimes I wish the public could spend a day in our rooms with us, and see what we go through on a daily basis. Teachers just are NOT appreciated enough. But I digress...

At our school we do small group reading groups for 35 minutes, and then also do Daily 5 with our whole class. For reading homework, we focus on our reading group. We know that they are many ways to do homework out there, but we wanted to share what we do. Because our "small groups" are actually quite large (our kids who have the highest need to get 1:6 groups, but the classroom teachers end up with 15-20 or so), we just don't have time in our groups to collect and pass out homework everyday. So we decided to go with the weekly homework system. We pass out homework on Monday, and the kids are responsible for taking care of it all week, and then they turn it back in on Friday.

In our homework folders, we include our Reading program homework for the week, as well as 2 paper books at the kids individual DRA level. We print these mostly from Reading A-Z and also use Scholastic Mini Books. The kids take great care of these and do return them for the most part. This year in my reading group I've also included a parent component to reading. Not only do the kids have to read for 10 minutes a night, but they have to be read to for 10 minutes as well. Hopefully this will really stress the importance of reading to your kids, no matter what level they are at.



If you'd like to use our reading homework logs, here ya go! Click HERE to download your own copies. And since most of you fabulous teachers need to eat... we thought we'd share another recipe with you!

Crispy Southwest Chicken Wraps

Here's a little recipe that my family LOVES! We are a burrito lovin' family and always looking for new burrito/wrap recipes. This Crispy Southwest Chicken Wrap recipe comes from melskitchencafe, and it is oh so yummy!

I always change recipes up a bit and here are a few of my changes:

* I left out the peppers and cilantro since we topped ours

with fresh homemade salsa.

*I added the spices to the rice as it boiled.

*I fried our burritos in a little oil instead of spraying them with cooking spray. Probably not the healthiest, but they sure did taste good.

Have a great week friends!

Only 2 more days and it's the weekend!

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Habitats & What to Eat Wednesday

Hi all! Hope you're all having a fantastic week! This week we have been busy focusing on habitats and we thought we'd share some freebies with our blogger friends!

The first vocabulary activity relates to our Step Up to Writing program. These vocabulary worksheets have a word, brief definition, and a picture. We read the definitions with our students, write the word, glue on the matching picture, and then these sheets go into their writing binders (we'll show you these soon). Our kiddos can refer to these vocabulary words throughout the school year when writing. As soon as february approaches, our students do most of the definition writing with us, but for now we print it for them.

Click HERE for two vocabulary sheets along with picture cards and answer sheets!

Tundra, River, Ocean, Rainforest, Forest, and Desert have been our main focus this week. We've shown several photos and read books about these six habitats. Here is a habitat writing activity that we also did this week with our first graders.

Click HERE to get your copy!

Finally we are finishing off the week with a small group activity. We each have 6 table groups in our classrooms. Each table group will get a large white poster with a specific habitat written on the poster. Each student will get a picture of an animal that can be found in their specific habitat. The table groups are going to create posters of their habitats and glue their animal pictures onto their posters.

Click HERE to get 6 different sets of animal cards!

And finally we have a yummy new recipe that you all might like to try. Even my picky little eater devoured hers!

Lasagna Cupcakes (from: The Girl Who Ate Everything)

These were fantastic and really quick to make

A few tips:

1. I used gyoza wrappers instead of wonton wrappers. Gyoza wrappers are similar to wonton wrappers but they are round. They worked perfectly!

2. Throwing in some minced garlic while the ground beef was cooking really added a lot of flavor to the meat.

3. I used a little over 1 lb. of ground beef and also used a jar marinara sauce. I was able to make 12 Lasagna Cupcakes and even had leftover ingredients to make a few more for leftovers the next day!

Hope you all have a fabulous rest of your week!

Only 2 more days until Friday!

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Clip art courtesy of Scrappin Doodles

What To Eat Wednesday

Along with motivational Monday, we thought we'd start another weekly post,

What To Eat Wednesday

Our lives are so busy with teaching and being moms and we are always on the lookout for yummy dinners and treats to make for our families. Although our blog is a teaching blog, we thought you all, being busy teachers, parents, caretakers, etc... might appreciate a great recipe that even the pickiest eaters might enjoy.

Today's recipe is one of our favorite kid friendly recipes, and what's even better is that we have some ideas on what to do with your leftovers!

This Crunchy Baked Chicken Cutlets recipe comes from Family Fun and the recipe

can be found HERE.

Here are some of our tips when making this recipe:

• We don't always follow the measurements for the mayonnaise, mustard, or panko, (we just use the recipe as a guideline and adjust the flavor if needed).
• We pound the chicken breasts before cutting and dipping into the mayo mix and panko. They seem to cook better this way.
• We like to cut the chicken into nugget size pieces. Our kiddos are able to dip them easier this way:)
• We always make a little extra so we have leftovers. The leftovers definitely don't reheat well in the microwave so we serve them cold in Chicken Wraps (chicken nuggets, lettuce, shredded cheddar, and ranch dressing wrapped up in a tortilla) or use the nuggets to make a salad (lettuce, chicken nugget pieces, tomatoes, and any other toppings you might like on your salad)

Here is a picture before they went into the oven. These are baking as I type! I know the picture is a little off center, but this was the best looking picture out of the bunch, and raw chicken really doesn't look very appealing in pictures :) This is 4 chicken breasts pounded which made quite a bit with a lot of leftovers for my family of 3.

We hope you all have a wonderful rest of your week! Stay tuned tomorrow for some new items that will be added to our TpT store!

Clip art courtesy of Scrappin Doodles