Sharing Rambling, Resources and Recipes for Learning in Life

Sharing Rambling, Resources and Recipes for Learning in Life

Author: Audrea

FarmingRamblings

Picking the date WORKED!!

By Audrea3 Comments

Picking a date to have our garden in by worked this year! It did not work perfectly, but what really does, except salvation with Jesus!! Even salvation, or really the sanctification that comes after salvation is still a rocky ride sometimes due to our humanity! But, back to the garden. Giving my husband a date that I wanted the garden in and ready to plant, got it done. I wanted the garden ready to go by the end of Spring Break this year, but gave us until the following weekend in case we needed it. With the Coronavirus Spring Break never really ended this year. We’ve been home from school since the week before Spring Break. Even though we didn’t know when we’d go back, Adam wanted the garden in by the date I gave him. Also, even though both of us had reservations about actually planting at the end of March, he bought the plants and we not only tilled and put the plastic down for the garden, we planted it.

It WAS too early to plant and we’ve had to cover the garden two or three times. A couple of times for frost and once to protect it from the weed killer being sprayed in our back field. We lost 3 tomato plants to the frost and we’ve had to replant corn, okra and cucumber seeds because the first round of corn only produced about 4 sprouts, which are still going strong and the cucumbers and okra didn’t come up at all. So, we’ve had ups and downs. But now we are seeing the fruits from our labors. We have okra coming up! Our cauliflower is growing like crazy and one is turning purple (apparently that’s kind of normal!!). Corn is sprouting again and much better this time! We’ve picked a few radishes and have more almost ready to pick! The okra have all sprouted this time! We’ve replaced the tomato plants we lost and they all seem to be growing well. We have strawberries on the strawberry plants and peppers starting to grow on one of the green pepper plants.

I’ve been reading and watching videos to help me grow my blog and one of the things mentioned is to just start and another is to keep it simple, get organized and just do the next step. Apparently, picking a date was the one small thing needed to ensure that we started our garden and that starting is ensuring that we will have a harvest.

It has definitely been easy to feel overwhelmed during this virus. With the amount of news coverage and conflicting stories about the virus, homeschooling the girls WHILE virtual schooling about 40 middle schoolers, trying to increase my blog posts and my inventory in my Teachers Pay Teachers store, Basics Rethought, my head spins and I feel lost and overwhelmed often. So, I think this is timely advice and I am grateful for this evidence that it works. It also means that God has a plan for all things in His time. He extends grace when we get ahead of him (He saved all of our plants but three). And He is with us the whole time we work. BUT, we have to move forward, we have to step out and we do have to work! THEN He will supply the increase!

HealthParentingRecipes

Homemade Larabars or Bites

By Audrea1 Comment

I have done a couple of Whole30’s. In doing those I have only tried a few Whole30 approved snacks. This is because, in case you haven’t noticed in some of my other posts, I don’t like to spend extra money on things. This is partly to be responsible with the money God has given us to steward and partly because my husband is most assuredly NOT a fan of Whole30 or many of the other “healthy” things I try. He was raised on white bread, Little Debbie snacks and margarine and he loves them! He is also a healthy weight and gets better numbers at his check ups than I do! He is also super frugal and doesn’t want to “waste” money that we don’t have or have to!!

Larabars were one of the Whole30 snacks that I did indulge in. On busy mornings, with getting all of us to school for the day, they were a lifesaver. They are a fairly expensive lifesaver when you are used to buying Little Debbie snacks or Sunbelt granola bars from the discount store in their hometown of Gentry, AR. One other drawback to Larabars for me was that most of them are made with walnuts and at the time I was reacting to walnuts. My mouth would get sore and then it progressed to the back of my throat itching and sometimes swelling a little. Because I had heard from my husband’s aunt who is a nurse that nut allergies can progress, I thought it would be in my best interest to steer clear of walnuts for a while.

So, I looked up homemade Larabar recipes to save myself money and the possibility of anaphylactic shock. The one I keep going back to is by Chocolate Covered Katie. I use this recipe as the base for all the versions of my homemade larabars, which I normally make into bites now. I started doing this because it is just easier to scoop them with my small cookie scoop instead of trying to press them into something and cut them up. I am hopeful that since one of my husband’s other aunts sells Pampered Chef that I may be able to score their Snack Bar Maker Set for Christmas! Then I might make them into bars again. You can click here for that original recipe. Below you can see how I use the main ingredients from her recipe as the base for my recipe(s).

Here is my base recipe:

1 cup nuts

1 1/3 cups dates

That’s it. From there the options are rather endless. I’ll include two versions that I have made below to give you some ideas.

Chocolate:

Add 3-4 tsp. cocoa powder

Yesterday, since I had dates left over after my chocolate one ones I also made Cinnamon Raisin.

Cinnamon Raisin:

Reduce dates to 1 cup and add 1/3 cup raisins (or use all 1 1/3 cup raisins, these are sweeter)

Add 1-3 tsp ground cinnamon

Add a generous sprinkle of ground cloves

Add about 1/4 tsp nutmeg

I also added 3 tsp of peanut butter to make them richer

Directions for all variations:

Place all ingredients in a food processor, various recipes I’ve looked at say you can use a high powered blender, but I’ve only used a food processor. Mix until it is a smooth and slightly clumpy mixture. Scoop the mixture out with a cookie scoop (round more with hands if you prefer) into a ziplock bag or airtight container. Store in the refrigerator. I have also pressed these into cupcake papers in cupcake tins to make a slightly larger serving size and cuter presentation. You could also stir in additional chocolate chips or chunks to the chocolate version and raisins to the cinnamon raisin version if you want to. This last time with the chocolate version, I added a few pieces of my paleo chocolate before I ran the food processor just to make them richer.

I really enjoy these as a healthy fruit based indulgence for myself. I also REALLY love that my girls feel like they’re getting candy and they’re eating fruits and nuts. I was SO thrilled that since I have not been reacting to walnuts lately and my mom has given us several bags of them lately that I was able to make these with walnuts instead of almonds this yesterday. They are so smooth and decadent!! Also, we are all getting a boost in Omega 3 fatty acids which are supposed to be helpful for children with ADHD symptoms. My oldest has no diagnosis, but focus and controlling impulses can be difficult tasks for her. Therefore we value any diet additions we can make that will help her strengthen her focusing and impulse control. We are currently focusing on adding magnesium through Concentrace Essential Mineral Drops and Omega 3’s through diet.

If you try either of these or your own variation, I’d love to hear about it!

EducationRamblingsResourcesScience of Reading

Orthographic Mapping

By Audrea2 Comments

In this post I am going to try to explain orthographic mapping. I will not be able to fully explain it because I am still adding to my understanding of it. When you read texts, books or publications from the experts in the Science of Reading, you may hear about a person’s orthographic lexicon and their sight word vocabulary. Understanding what is meant by those two terms will help you understand orthographic mapping a bit more.

First up, orthographic lexicon. This is simply an individual’s lexicon, which means a vocabulary (dictionaries are sometimes referred to as lexicons) of words that they recognize and can read on sight. They no longer have to sound them out, they recognize that string of letters as a word instantaneously EVERY time they see it. It is called an ORTHOGRAPHIC lexicon because ortho means right, correct or straight and the person reads these words correctly every time they see them. Graph means to write or draw, so again the person reads these words correctly every time they see them written. The suffix -ic simply means having to do with reminding us that the lexicon/vocabulary has to do with correctly read written words. So an Orthographic Lexicon is a person’s VOCABULARY or collection of words that they read CORRECTLY every time they see them WRITTEN down.

Secondly, we will cover what is meant by sight word vocabulary in the Science of Reading. If you have been teaching for any length of time you have likely heard of sight words. You may even remember learning “sight words” when you were in school. In these contexts “sight words” are actually just high frequency words. This means they are words that appear often in our language and if you can read these words you will be able to read the majority of texts you have to read. However, within the context of the Science of Reading sight word vocabulary refers only to a person’s orthographic lexicon, those words that an individual can read correctly and instantaneously on sight, regardless of context or font.

The process of getting a word from being a random string of letters to a word within a person’s orthographic lexicon is called orthographic mapping. The most enlightening thing about orthographic mapping, in my opinion, is that it is NOT based on sight. Unlike letter names and sounds that are learned by sight, we map words based on meaning. This is where that repurposing of language centers within the brain comes into play. When children or people are learning new words and orthographically mapping them (committing them to memory) they use the portions of the brains where the meanings and definitions of words are stored, not the sight parts of the brain. This explains why you may see someone familiar in the hallway, but not remember their name even though you can tell by sight that you know them. But, if you’ve orthographically mapped the word brown, you will automatically and correctly read it every time you see it. You won’t know it one day and forget it the next.

This understanding of the fact that we use meaning to get to words to “stick” instead of repetitions or visual/sight practice is the biggest game changer for me in understanding orthographic mapping. It means that if a child sounds out a word repeatedly, but has no understanding of the meaning of the word it will take longer to map the word. The meaning can be based on why the letters make the sounds they make in the word. For example, you may teach a student why circle has the /s/ sound for the first c (because it is followed by an i), but it has the /k/ sound for the second c )because it is followed by the consonant l). Or it can be based on the actual meaning of the word circle (that it is a round shape with no corners or sides).

There are several strategies that help readers map words more quickly. One is the use of sound boxes. This is particularly helpful for words that don’t sound like they are spelled like the word said. If you are using sound boxes with said you would need 3 boxes even though there are 4 letters. You only use one box for each sound regardless of how many letters it takes to spell it. The first box would be for the s that says /s/, the second box would be for ai that says /e/ and the third box would be for the d that says /d/. This strategy is actually to help students learn to spell words correctly. However, attaching the meaning of which sound is spelled with which letters can help the reader map the word more quickly. Stopping to discuss the meaning of a word that the reader does not know (how to read OR the meaning of) will also help with mapping. Thirdly, discussing the meaning of the whole sentence after figuring out a word that the reader could not read on their own, but knows the meaning of helps speed up orthographic mapping. A good reader needs 3-4 exposures to words to map them into their orthographic lexicon. Struggling readers need up to 20 or more. Studies have been done up to about 16 exposures, but then the difference in recognition starts to drop off so studies have not really been done on higher numbers of repetitions.

This is where and why having a strong verbal vocabulary is important to people as they are learning to read. As long as words remain simply strings of letter sounds with no real meaning to the reader, they will struggle to map the words and their reading rate (speed of reading) will remain slower. Another interesting thing to keep in mind before we leave this subject is that David Kilpatrick, one of the leaders in the study of the Science of Reading, says that we can work with young children to help them map words, but that mapping doesn’t really pick up until third and fourth grade. This is a tricky and possibly reassuring thought for some of our struggling readers in 2nd grade. It is vital that they have a strong and accurate knowledge of letter sounds and rules, but if they have a strong and complete phonics foundation and are still a slow reader it is likely that their orthographic mapping has just not picked up yet. This does NOT mean we should not be intervening for these students. It does mean that if speed is their only deficit, they may not be behind. Interventions should focus on phonics and phonemic skills to make sure that they are BOTH accurate AND automatic with all of those skills AND on building their verbal vocabulary through read alouds, class discussions and conversations. Their speed should be increasing. If it isn’t or if they are lacking in either ACCURACY or AUTOMATICITY in phonics or phonemic skills they need continued intervention on those things.

HealthRecipes

Chocolate Chip Cookies (White Bean Version!!!)

By Audrea2 Comments

I am currently doing the 30 Day MakeFatCry Challenge by Betty Rocker. It is a challenge that gives you a 15 minute workout each day, including active rest day workouts so your body gets a break while you still move each day. During the challenge you get the workout emailed to you each day. Some days include some “extras” in the form of extra workouts or recipes. She also offers a Challenge Meal Plan that is whole food based to nourish your body with all of the macro and micro nutrients it needs to look and feel its best! Since the meal plan is not free, I haven’t tried it. I did try one of the recipes she sent as one of the “extras” today though.

Today I made Chocolate Chip cookies that are flourless. Now, most of the time that I see “flourless” cookies or desserts it means almond meal or coconut flour. I think both of those are likely wonderful ingredients and very healthy. Unfortunately, they are also very expensive and I am not yet ready to invest that much money into experimenting. So, I was excited that flourless in this recipe truly meant flourless.

Here is her original recipe:

1 can of white beans (drained and slightly patted dry)

1/3 honey or maple syrup

1/3 walnut or almond butter

1/4-1/3 cup ground chia seeds (optional)

1-3 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 cup dark chocolate chips (she uses dairy free from Enjoy Life or similar)

Heres the directions:

  1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees
  2. Line a baking sheet with parchment
  3. Put everything except the chocolate chips in a food processor and blend until smooth
  4. Stir in chocolate chips
  5. Scoop out with a cookie scoop onto the parchment
  6. Cook for 12-16 minutes

I didn’t have everything in the ingredient list so here’s the recipe I actually made:

1 can of white beans (drained and slightly patted dry)

1/3 honey

1/3 walnut butter-ish (I processed walnuts in my small food processor until that were a paste)

1/4-1/3 cup ground flax seeds (I didn’t have any chia seeds left)

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 cup dark chocolate chunks (I used my paleo chocolate chopped into pieces and a small handful of Nestle Chocolate chips when I could tell near the end of scooping that I was out of chocolate in the dough)

Here’s the steps I followed:

I had a little bit of extra work because I didn’t just have everything on hand. I had flax seeds, but not ground. So, while the beans drained in the colander, I used my seed grinder to grind the flax seeds. Then I got out my walnuts from the freezer because I didn’t want to use peanut butter, but I have been given a lot of walnuts lately. The walnuts went into my small food processor and started grinding while I put the beans, honey (always be sure to spray your measuring cup with oil before measuring honey to make pouring it out easier and wasting less of it), baking powder and baking soda into my large food processor. Somewhere in here is when I remembered to turn the oven on to 350 degrees. Then I scooped out enough of the walnut “paste” for the recipe and left the rest in the small food processor. Later, I added raisins, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg and made oatmeal raisin bites (similar to Larabars) for my daughters. Then I ran the large food processor until everything was smooth. While that was going, I chopped some of my paleo chocolate that I had in the fridge to equal 1/2 a cup. Once it was smooth (it went really fast), I scooped that out into a bowl and stirred in the chocolate chunks. Then I put foil on two cookie sheets (I didn’t have parchment paper) and used a small cookie scoop to scoop the cookies out onto the cookie sheets. As I got close to the end of the dough I could see that there was no chocolate so I threw in a small handful of Nestle Tollhouse Chocolate Chips. Once I finished scooping. I put the cookie sheets into the oven on two different racks and set the timer for 6 minutes. A trick that I’ve learned from my dad, the baker, is to rotate your cookie sheets on their shelves halfway through cooking. After six minutes, I switched the cookie sheets and cooked them for 7 more minutes. After I took them out, I let them cool on the cookie sheets. Okay, I did eat one as soon as they came out of the oven. Then I scooped them off the foil with my small dessert spatula from Pampered Chef and put them in my cookie jar.

Here’s what I think of them:

They are good and I think they get better as they sit in the cookie jar. The coconut oil in the paleo chocolate adds a crispiness to the edges of some of the cookies. They are NOT Nestle Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookies (my absolute favorite dessert, IF my dad makes them). I had been having a chocolate chip cookie each morning with my tea during my quiet time, but that didn’t seem like such a healthy choice. I think this is a lovely alternative. It seems like these would be high in fiber with the ground flax seed and beans and that is something I am focusing on currently in this journey of remembering that and treating my body as a temple of the Holy Spirit. There are some nutrition facts on Betty Rocker’s page, but they didn’t include the fiber content. The comments did say they are in My Fitness Pal though, so that would likely give that content. If you try these, I’d love to hear how they turn out for you. There are tweaks and versions mentioned in the comments on Betty Rocker’s page, if you’re interested in them.

EducationRamblingsResourcesScience of Reading

Letter Name and Sound Recognition (where reading starts)

By Audrea2 Comments

As children are developing their Phonemic Awareness they will also start to develop their knowledge of letter names and sounds. Phonemic Awareness starts to develop as children become aware of spoken language and continues to and through 2nd grade at the most complex levels. If anyone (child or adult) does not develop all the necessary Phonemic Awareness skills, they can still and always be learned and this will strengthen that individual’s reading fluency.

Letter names and sounds are the foundation of learning to read, which again is NOT a natural thing for our brains to learn. The brain repurposes part of its language centers for learning to read written language. Letter names and sounds is the one part of reading that is visual in learning and remembering. Word recognition is based on meaning, but letter recognition is based on sight.

This means that letter recognition takes hundreds, if not thousands, of exposures to the letters. It is also important to expose your child or student to multiple fonts and cursive and print versions of the letters and to work on both upper and lower case letters as they are learning the letter names and sounds. There are various ideas of whether students should learn letter names or sounds first. This is because children need the sounds to read, but they only need the names for spelling. And spelling is a later skill than reading.

One idea is that they should learn them simultaneously and that they should learn all the sounds for each letter at the same time. This is the one that makes the most sense to me. I like this idea because several letter sounds are an alliteration to their names. This means that the beginning of the letter sound is the same as the beginning sound of the letter name like /d/and d, /t/ and t, /b/ and b. So, learning both together strengthens sound recognition for several letters. Some that are confusing based on alliteration are c and g, but if you are teaching both soft and hard sounds from the beginning it becomes easier. The letter c has the hard sound /k/ which is not an alliteration, but it also has the soft sound /s/ which is an alliteration. *The letter g is the same way, it says it’s hard sound /g/ when it comes before an a, o, u, or any consonant and it says it’s soft sound /j/ when it comes before an e, i, or y (that is the same rules as the letter c). And although the letter g’s hard sound is not an alliteration with it’s name, it’s soft sound is. *There are some exceptions to the spelling rule mentioned above, but the better you know the rules of English the fewer exceptions there are.

I also agree that it is good to teach students all of the sounds a letter can make from the beginning. This means teaching soft and hard c and g sounds, long and short vowel sounds. When I first read this, I felt that this would just be confusing and too much for young children. However, as I navigate reading with my daughters it is showing as a better and better idea. For my oldest who needs a LOT of repetition and is very literal, being taught all sounds and when to use them from the beginning would have strengthened her knowledge of all the sounds with the repetitions as she was learning to read. With my youngest who is able to read higher and harder texts than she’s been “taught” to read, having automaticity with the multiple sounds of letters would “unlock” those tricky words for her.

So, I advocate for teaching children both the letter names and sounds, individually, but at the same time. This means I would teach them their letter names with multiple fonts and as many repetitions as possible. And then I would also work with them on sounds with multiple fonts and as many repetitions. I would not teach them to read a card A says /a/ and do the letter name and sound simultaneously. It needs to be clear to the child that there is a difference between name and sound and you should ask them for one type of skill at a time. You can ask for the name of one letter when you show a card and then switch to ask for the sound of the next card after repeatedly practicing with both skills.

I also advocate for teaching children ALL of the sounds a letter can make and which is the most common from the very beginning. They should know that c USUALLY says /k/. But if the word you’re reading doesn’t make sense with /k/, it also says /s/ and you can try that sound. It just gives them more options as they are sounding things out and builds an unconscious knowledge of the rules for when it says what. The child may start to see that certain letters follow each sound. Then as you teach the rule they already have a frame of reference for it, or a word that comes to mind as a example of the rule.

I hope this information is helpful in understanding how our brains learn this information and the purposes it serves. Please let me now what you have experienced in helping children read and share any tips that you have found helpful! I am always eager to learn!

EducationRamblingsResources

Phonemic Awareness, What Is it and Why does it Matter?

By Audrea2 Comments

In a nutshell Phonemic Awareness is the ability to hear the individual sounds in spoken words and manipulate them. You may manipulate them to form other words or break the word into parts or isolate and produce one sound or part from the word. It is tasks like changing the /c/ in cat to /b/ and recognizing that that makes the word bat. It also goes from something that simple or as simple as saying birthday without birth and knowing that makes day, to things as complex as knowing that saying picnic backwards gives you kinkip or knowing that animal without an is imal. Some of it is super easy, some of it is super hard. It seems even harder if you are learning to do it AFTER becoming a proficient reader because you automatically think of how words are spelled instead of just how they sound. So, when a proficient reader is asked to say cake backwards they often want to say ehcake instead of the correct cake. The e makes no sound going forward, so it can make no sound going backward. Fortunately, when you are working on these skills as a toddler through first grader you are more proficient at listening to language than at reading it making these tasks are simpler to learn.

Like all parts of reading and reading as a whole, there are children and people who will intuitively learn this sound and word manipulation. Also, like those other reading parts, there are many who need to be explicitly taught these skills. Which leads us to the “Why is it important?” part of the title. The simple answer is: Because it makes us better readers. The complex answer is: We don’t really know. What I mean by that is that there is a direct correlation between phonemic awareness and reading ability, but from what I have read no one knows exactly why that is the case. So, we know it matters that young children and older children, if they didn’t master it when they were young, need these skills in order to become proficient readers. What we don’t know is why.

The best news about phonemic awareness to me is that it is all aural. This means it all takes place with spoken words. The child or student doesn’t have to read anything to practice these skills. That means it is a welcome break for struggling readers and that it can be worked on with very young children. As I stated earlier, it starts very simple and gets rather complex. It has been rather fascinating to me as a reading teacher to see how some of the simplest parts of this like say birthday, now say birthday without day (which gives you birth) is NOT always an automatic and/or accurate thing for some struggling readers even if they are in the 6th, 7th or 8th grade. One of the best resources I know of to practice these skills is David Kilpatrick’s book, Equipped for Reading Success. In the book he explains more than I have here about Phonemic Awareness and also gives pages and pages of exercises and drills to use for the practice and mastery these skills.

Again the best part is that they feel like word games to most children and it can take less than a minute to practice for the day. This is the book I use with my own daughters (they are in kindergarten and second grade) to ensure they have mastered all the levels of Phonemic Awareness they need as well as with my students in Middle School.

FaithRamblings

God Winks

By Audrea2 Comments

Recently I posted on Facebook that that day it wasn’t my daughters who were done and over this homeschooling, working from home thing, it was me. That day they had both gotten up, gotten dressed and set to work with focus and determination because they wanted to be free to play and knew work had to come first. There was a huge outpouring of love and support from family and friends in reaction to that post. One in particular caught my eye and my heart. She said she hoped I got a God wink that day.

It caught my heart because I was instantly convicted that maybe He had already winked and I was so grumpy and feeling so sorry for myself that I missed it. Indeed of course He had! I mean did you read what I said about the girls that day! That is NOT typical for us, especially for my oldest who just doesn’t value school or the character growth that comes from doing things she doesn’t want to do (I mean how many of us really do). But, God winked again when a different friend brought Sonic lunch to our door to “help us through the rainy, yucky day”.

Since that day I have been more observant, and as a consequence have caught more of God’s winks. He winked at me yesterday when my workout for the day in my 30 Day Make Fat Cry Challenge was a Yoga flow (I had 0 energy or motivation). He winked at me when my healthier food choices this week finally gave way to some added energy today. He’s winked multiple times this week with beautiful sunrises on my morning walks that I’ve started to get some alone time and exercise during this change in our personal world. I am grateful for my friend’s response, not because it made God wink more, but because it made me more aware of it. He REALLY does care about the little things, that’s why we don’t have to sweat them. If you feel alone and like no one sees you or cares about you, HE does! If you don’t know Him, just ask Him to show Himself to you, He will. Feel free to send me a comment if I can help you get to know Him! He’s TRULY the friend that sticks closer than a brother!

Recipes

Easy Stromboli, An Oldy, But A Goody

By Audrea2 Comments

I was recently visiting to my mom. While I was there she offered me some lunchmeat because she had opened a 5 lb package and was concerned they wouldn’t be able to eat it all before it went bad. I took some, but it also reminded me of a recipe she made when we were kids. She would make homemade stromboli with refrigerated bread dough, lunch meat, sliced cheese and mayo.

I always enjoyed it and since she had given us some lunchmeat, I decided to try it for my family. I didn’t have any refrigerated dough, but I did have a “batch” of my Artisan Bread dough in the freezer. I was able to mix an old favorite with a new favorite and it worked perfectly.

I thawed the dough out that afternoon. Then instead of rolling the dough in flour, I greased the counter with oil from my Pampered Chef sprayer. Once I rolled it in the oil and “oiled” my hands, I put it on a greased cookie sheet and stretched it out. Then I put a layer of lunch meat across the middle, then some mayo, then a layer of sliced cheese, then a repeat of each layer. Then I pulled the dough over the filling and pinched the ends over the top and together. I sprayed some oil on top and sprinkled it with some garlic seasoning. I preheated the oven to 450. Then I baked the Stromboli for 20 minutes. You can slice it with a pizza cutter or a large knife. My husband and youngest loved it. My oldest is not a huge fan, but she’ll eat it! Since she seems to be randomly becoming a bit of a picky eater, I don’t worry too much when she doesn’t like something currently. The thing I really like about this recipe is that it is quick and easy to put together. The bread dough is simple to mix up, although it does have to sit for 8-24 hours to be ready. If you have some in the freezer though, you just have to thaw it, or you can plan ahead and mix it up the night before. It is also a very versatile recipe. The most we’ve changed it was to add onions last night when I made it for the third time this month! But, you could use italian sausage, tomatoes and mozzarella, or you could do pepperoni and colby/jack cheese shredded or sliced, or even a veggie version with mushrooms, peppers, onions and provolone.

Stromboli Recipe:

Refrigerated bread dough or Artisan Bread dough

8 slices thick cut lunchmeat

6-8 slices of American cheese

4 tablespoons mayonnaise

Garlic Powder/Salt

Directions:

Grease cookie sheet.

Push dough out on the cookie sheet into a rough rectangle.

Lay 4 pieces of lunchmeat across the middle, overlapping slightly.

Spread 2 tablespoons of mayo over meat

Lay 3-4 pieces of sliced cheese over the mayo, overlapping slightly

Repeat each layer

Pull the dough up and over the filling pressing the seam together with fingers, be especially careful to get the ends firmly pressed closed.

Spray oil over top of Stromboli

Sprinkle with garlic seasoning

Cook in preheated oven for 20 minutes

Recipes

My Favorite Recipe, AMAZING Artisan Bread!!

By Audrea3 Comments

My family bakes A LOT! My dad is actually a certified baker (he went to college for baking). He’s worked and managed a Sprouted Grain bread bakery and owned a coffee shop/bakery. My mother is a fabulous cook. I picked up several of my mom’s habits in the kitchen and am the most likely of my sisters to make something from scratch. Only my brother surpasses me in adventuring in the kitchen. So, it is very strange that I never tried my hand at making bread until a couple of years ago. I admit I am still not terribly adventurous in the area of bread making. Although I have made my own sourdough starter, and kept it going throughout a summer and beyond. However, my first foray into bread making was a HUGE success and has turned out to be my favorite recipe, possibly of all time! I know “man cannot live on bread alone”, but if I had to, this is the bread I’d do it with!

It is called a Crusty Artisan Bread and I did not make up the recipe, I just looked it up and tried it. It is so simple and I’ve made it so often that I don’t even have to look it up anymore (unless I’m super tired or stressed and then I like to double check my memory)! The two “catches” of the recipe is that it has to rise 8-24 hours, typically overnight in our house, and it bakes in a Dutch Oven. I have used this recipe in it’s original form, made it into a loaf of bread, made cinnamon raisin bread, and used it for my homemade Stromboli. Below is the original recipe and baking directions. This makes a thick crust with a soft, chewy inside.

Crusty Artisan Bread

Recipe:

3 cups flour

1/2 tsp yeast

2 tsp salt (coarse salt, not iodized table salt is recommended by the original recipe, but I’ve used both successfully)

1 1/2 cups warm water

Mixing Directions:

Put the dry ingredients in a bowl or a large measuring bowl (if the bowl has it’s own lid that is ideal). Whisk the dry ingredients together to mix the yeast and salt into the flour well. Pour the warm water (I just use very warm tap water) into the dry ingredients. Use your hand or a greased wooden spoon to mix the water and dry ingredients together into a soft, sticky dough. I generally just use my hand, but I have used a greased spoon once to save on time from washing up. Cover the dough with plastic wrap or the bowl’s lid and leave the dough out to rise for 8-24 hours. I admit to having left mine over 24 hours before and it still worked well. 12 hours is generally the least I’ve ever left it to rise.

Baking Directions:

When you are ready to bake the bread, turn your oven on to 450 degrees and place your dutch oven in the oven WITH the lid on while it preheats. While the oven heats up dust your counter with flour. Dump the dough onto the flour. Roll it around just enough to make it into a large ball. Cover with the plastic wrap, if you used it, or just leave it if you used a bowl lid to cover the dough. Once the oven and Dutch Oven reach 450 degrees, pull the Dutch Oven out, remove the lid, drop your bread into the pot. Cut two slits in the top with a sharp knife (just do the best you can, this isn’t a super sensitive recipe). Replace the lid. Place the closed Dutch Oven back into the oven. Bake at 450 WITH the lid on for 30 minutes. Then remove the lid and bake for an additional 5 minutes WITHOUT the lid to brown the crust and finish the inside! Once the bread is completely done, I generally just leave it in the open Dutch Oven to cool, unless I’ve baked it before school for a teacher gift and then I just wrap it warm in a towel to keep it from sweating and deliver it warm!

EducationRamblingsScience of Reading

Reading Unwound

By Audrea2 Comments

As you may or may not know the state of Arkansas, where I live and teach, has had a major reading initiative for the last 3 years or so. The idea of this initiative is to make sure ALL teachers know about the “Science of Reading” and use it to correctly and systematically to teach ALL children to read. There has been this back and forth pendulum (like there so often is in education) between Whole Language ideas and Phonics based ideas in teaching reading. That’s okay for the 20-40% of students who will learn to read no matter what. But, for the rest of the kids this tug-of-war is debilitating!

Because of this initiative I have been listening to a lot of webinars, reading books and going to a lot of trainings. With all of this information, I get overwhelmed sometimes and have been trying to figure out a straight forward way to understand how to teach children to read based on how their brains learn to read. It seems to have magically distilled down to a process for me today. Learning to read is not a natural activity for our brains. Our brains have to rework/rewire different language portions of the brain to use them for reading.

The short list of the process in my understanding is this:

  1. Children learn to manipulate the sounds in words (by rhyming games, nursery rhymes and explicit instruction)
  2. Children learn the letter names and sounds (by sight through hundreds to thousands of repetitions)
  3. Children learn to put those sounds together to form words (decodable text)
  4. Children gain a broader spoken word vocabulary that they can use to attach meaning to the words they decode.
  5. Children develop an extensive Sight Word (instantly recognized) vocabulary as they map words to their long term memory (based on meaning) using Orthographic Mapping (strong readers do this with 3-4 exposures to a word, struggling readers may need more than 20)

Number 1 is often happening in the background about the same time as children are learning their letter names and sounds. Similarly, number 4 is actually happening from the time the child is born and begins listening to the language around them. However, you have to again recognize that there are children that will learn to read no matter what as long as they receive some kind of exposure and instruction. Others will require systematic and explicit teaching of each skill. Those that require that explicit instruction will not likely or naturally develop these “background” skills without that explicit instruction. I plan to write another post about each of these steps and more of the nuances that I see in each one.

Update: I have finished the posts about the different pillars and some of the components of specific pillars. If those are helpful to you check them out here:

The Difference Between Phonemic and Phonological Awareness (as I see it)
Orthographic Mapping
Vocabulary, What It Is and What It Isn’t.
Comprehension, the Last Building Block!
Fluency, Everything is Coming Together!
Phonics, the base of it all!
Letter Name and Sound Recognition (where reading starts)