What’s Eating You?

Ms. T over at Journey of a Substitute Teacher is hosting a linky party about what you brought for lunch today!  Seemed like a perfect excuse for a quick and easy blog post since I have been sorely missing writing/creating lately!  (The Hunger Games series has clearly taken over my life for a while…hopefully, I’ll return to regular activities soon enough!  )  Today, I brought some leftover white bean chicken chili with tortilla chips and water!  I’ve been obsessed with this chili lately and it is great for lunches!  Plus, it’s extremely easy (that’s always a perk!)

Just in case you need a new winter recipe, here’s something to add to your meal plans!

White Bean Chicken Chili

2 lb chicken breast
2 (4oz) can diced green chilis (undrained)
1 tsp. olive oil
chopped cilantro
1 tsp minced garlic
2 tsp ground cumin
1 c. chopped onion
1/4 tsp salt
1-19 oz can of cannellini beans undrained
1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper
1-15 oz can great northern beans undrained
1-15 oz can crispy white corn undrained (called Shoepeg corn by us!)
shredded cheese
crushed tortilla chips
in large saucepan, add chicken to boiling salted water.  Reduce heat to low.  Simmer, covered until chicken is fork tender and juices run clear (20-25 minutes).  Cut chicken into 1 inch pieces.  Heat oil in large frying pan, sauté garlic and onion over medium heat until onion is tender.  Stir in chicken.  Transfer to a large pot and stir in remaining ingredients.  Heat through.  Garnish with cilantro, cheese and tortilla chips.

Modifications: To make things really easy, we use a part of a rotisserie chicken.  Then, I throw the olive oil, onion, and garlic into a large sauce pan and heat them up a bit to soften the onion.  Then, I dump everything else in and warm!  I also like to scoop mine with tortilla chips rather than sprinkle them on.  We also double the amount of corn!

Enjoy!

Go link up with Ms. T!

Run, run, as fast as you can!

This week, we had lots of fun with the Gingerbread man in K4!  We read stories online here and here!  We also read Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett. 

We colored our own gingerbread houses with gingerbread babies inside. 

The gingerbread house is from HERE!  You can print my gingerbread baby page here:

Gingerbread Baby

  We also made a huge, 3-dimensional hallway display of our gingerbread man glyphs.  You can read the glyphs using the key posted by our gingerbread house.  Come check it out soon!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For more gingerbread fun at home, check out my pinterest page!  (Click the pinterest logo below.)  You can decorate your own gingerbread houses and men on many different pages or practice re-reading/retelling the story!

 

We will be continuing with more gingerbread fun next week since I have so many more fun activities to complete thanks to all the wonderful bloggers out there!  I will be using Deanna Jump’s gingerbread emergent reader from TPT - HERE!  Plus, I have several books I’m waiting to get my hands on at the library -

…and we still need to find time to read…

Whew…I’ll be running as fast as I can to Winter break!  A little over 2 weeks of the holiday craziness to get through.

Donors Choose–matched donations this week only!

Please consider donating to my Donors Choose project this week...all donations will be matched if you use the code SPARK - enter SPARK during check-out where it says "I have a gift or match code" - and voila! The donation is automatically doubled.

http://www.donorschoose.org/amanda.barber

 

Thank you!

Amanda

Giveaway at Mrs. Maya’s Kindergarten!

Ooooh, you can find a great giveaway over at Jamie’s blog!  She is giving one lucky reader a Heidi Songs DVD – Singable Songs for Letters & Sounds. 

Go check out the giveaway and enter HERE!

“Pie” Charts!

Just had to share a fun pie chart I’m doing with my kiddos next week.  We will be making pumpkin “pies” (crushed graham crackers, vanilla pudding with a smidge of pumpkin pie from a can, and some whipped cream) thanks to my smarty pants co-worker!  Then, we will create a pie chart of our favorite pie.  The kids will color their piece of the “pie” according to the key and then we will group them together on our chart.  I made the surrounding area look similar to a pie crust just to reinforce that this is a *PIE* chart.  I know they will love it!  We made a quick favorite veggie pie chart today using a simple circle drawn in paint divided into equal-ish parts.  The kids then used the paint bucket to drop color into the “pie pieces.”  Great way to explore graphing with the four-year-olds!

I have to say a big thank you to my previous co-teacher who showed me this fun way of creating pie charts with the kids!  Although, we had never made a pie chart about pies with the 5-K kiddos!    

Alphabet Sounds

My school district uses No More Letter of the Week to teach the letter sounds.  I created a half-page folded book for my little ones to practice the sounds with.  All images are from No More Letter of the Week found here.

Alphabet Book 10.31

Nutty November!

I can’t believe November is just around the corner!  This year has flown by so fast…Christmas will be here before I know it!  I’ve started making a few things for my November investigation stations.  I need my kiddos to continue to practice subitizing sets of numbers (easy practice with dice), so I created this printable using a coloring page from here.

Please leave me a message if you download and use!

Amanda

Turkey Roll and Color

 

Also, completely off topic, but I had to share the photos taken yesterday of my little peanut!

http://sdrewphotography.zenfolio.com/p439141928

Here’s one of my favorites: