Easy Peasy slow cooker meals!

Slow cookers are awesome if you can set them up so you can come home after a long day at work and walk into the house and dinner is already made.  They have the added bonus of turning cheaper cuts of meat into delicious foods due to the long, slow cooking time.  There are zillions of recipes out there for all sorts of things, but let's face it ... if you're like me, there's no way in heck you can prep a stuff in the morning with kids and hubby underfoot getting ready for work and school,   and in the evenings once I've wrestled the kids into bed, I'd rather watch an episode of Downton Abbey on Netflix or cruise Facebook for crumbs of info from the world outside my parenting bubble.  So here are a few super easy things to throw in your slow cooker:

1.  Beef or Pork Pot Roast.  Place the roast in the slow cooker. Pour a cup or two of beef or vegetable broth over the top.  Add some garlic and onions if you feel like it.  (Tip:  I keep pre-chopped onion and garlic in the freezer, so I can just grab some whenever I need it).  Turn the slow cooker on low for about 4-8 hours (depending on the size of your roast, your slow cooker manual should have a guide), or use the temperature probe if your slow cooker has one.  Optional:  add some potatoes around the roast.  (If they are really large, cut them in half).

2.  Roast Chicken.  Place the chicken in the slow cooker.  Pour a cup or two of chicken or vegetable broth over the top.  Cook on low for 6 hours.  Optional:  add some potatoes around the chicken. Note:  the skin doesn't crisp up, so you will want to pull it off before slicing up the chicken.

3.  BBQ Ribs.  Place the ribs in the slow cooker (either attached, or cut apart, depending on your preference).  Dump about a third to half a bottle of your favourite BBQ sauce over the top.  Cook on low for about 3 hours.

4.  Honey Garlic ribs.  Place the ribs in the slow cooker (either attached, or cut apart, depending on your preference).  Dump a bottle of store bought honey garlic sauce over the top.  Cook about 3 hours.

5.  Italian Chicken breasts.  Place 4 frozen skinless, boneless chicken breasts in the bottom of the slow cooker.  Sprinkle with Italian dressing mix OR pour on some Italian salad dressing.  Add one to two cups of chicken or vegetable broth, or water.  Cook on low for 6 to 8 hours, until chicken breasts are cooked through.  Optional:  add some potatoes around the chicken.

6.  Reheat Soup, chili, pasta sauce, etc.  Pop a frozen container of soup, chili, curry, or pasta sauce you've previously made into the slow cooker and turn it on to low for a few hours so it's ready to go when you come home.


Do you have a favourite super-easy slow cooker recipe of your own?  Please share!

Homemade Muffin Time & Money Saver

For years, I've always had store-bought muffin mixes on hand.  But over the past year I've been doing an increasing amount of cooking and baking from scratch. And I'm always on the lookout for tricks to offer convenience and savings alongside home-made goodness.

So I decided to try making my own muffin mixes.  Now, these don't turn into add-water-only recipes (though there may be a way to do that using powdered milk and eggs).  But by pre-measuring the dry ingredients and storing them in a jar, I save a bunch of steps when it comes time to making the muffins, and also ensure that I have everything on hand.  (Especially the chocolate chips, which somehow always vanish from the cupboard!)

Basically, you take your favourite recipe, measure all the dry ingredients and put them in a large mason jar or other container.

Prepping the chocolate chip banana mix

Close the container, and put a note on the outside listing the remaining ingredients to be added, and the oven temperature and recommended length of time for baking.

3 blueberry muffin and 3 chocolate chip banana mixes completed

Easy peasy!

This morning, I made up 6 jars of muffin mix.  It took me 20 minutes today, but that included clearing off the counter before I could get started, hunting down the camera to take some photos in the middle, refilling my flour and sugar bins afterwards, and washing all the measuring cups. Just the mix prep could be done in 10 minutes, and I often make up a mix or two when I have taken out the ingredients to make one batch on the spot.

Tips:

• Use a funnel to help fill the jars more easily.
• Measure one ingredient at a time into each jar (eg: measure 2.5 cups of flour into each container, then move on to the next ingredient).
• You may want to give the jar a good shake with the lid on to help mix up the salt, baking powder, etc so it's evenly mixed already when you go to use it. 
• Once you've written out the instructions for finishing a recipe once, photocopy it or scan and print it for additional copies.
• Look for recipes that don't have too many wet ingredients to add in order to complete the muffins.

Here is our favourite recipe, the Chocolate Chip banana one.  It has only 3 wet ingredients to add (mashed bananas, egg, and melted butter.  You can use oil instead to save the melting step):

From the Munster United Church cookbook, 2004

Watch this Space!

You may have noticed that after a long drought I flooded the is blog the other day with a series of postings related to classroom assessment and evaluation.

I'll confess that I didn't just open the floodgates out of the blue and decide to sit down and write a bunch of stuff on that particular topic.  For the past few months I've been taking a course to add to my professional teaching qualifications.  The last module of this course addressed the topic of assessment and evaluation and one of the options for the culminating task was to blog on the topic of assessment an evaluation.  While the intent was to blog to an audience solely of other educators, I though there was great value in also considering a parental audience.  Not to mention it fit better with my blog (sadly neglected though it has been).

Coincidentally, today a discussion regarding elementary education and parent concerns over the programming and delivery going on in the province in general and some local classrooms in particular came up today on a community discussion board of which I'm a part.  What became clear to me from the discussion was that there is a lot of misinformation or partial information out there about what goes on in today's classrooms.  Parents want to know more, and be more involved, but there is a disconnect between what the Ministry of Education, and school boards and individual schools are trying to communicate, and how it's being received by teachers.

So I'll be putting some time over the summer into trying to simplify some of the school jargon, and pare down the wordy and lengthy curriculum documents to give parents a better idea of what current best teaching practices entail.  I expect that putting it all out there into words will improve my own teaching practice, and perhaps also that of any teaching colleagues who also stumble across the blog.

Cheers!

Marianne

The Home Connection

NOTE:  This post is the fifth and final entry in a miniseries on Assessment and Evaluation in the classroom, aimed at providing support both to my teacher colleagues and to parents of school children. 

 Family are a child’s first teachers and they continue to play a vital role in a child’s education as they learn and grow.  Here are some ways for parents to help strengthen your child’s ability to communicate their understanding. (And ideas teachers can suggest to parents through newsletters and parent-teacher interviews).

 ·         Ask your child to explain or demonstrate what they are learning at school. This will help them to practice explaining their thinking or practice carrying out a task.

·         After a child finishes a learning task, ask them how well they think they did. Ask them what they think they could do to improve next time.  For example, if your child is practicing printing the number 3, ask them which of the threes they feel was their best one, and which one they think needs the most improvement.

 ·         Ask your child questions such as “why?”  “how do you know?” or “what makes you think that” so that you can understand their answers.  They might have an incorrect math solution, but have used a really great strategy to try and solve the problem.  Or, they might have a correct answer but not be able to explain how they came up with that answer.  It’s just as important for students to be able to communicate about what they think and know as it is for them to have the right answer.

·         From time to time when school work or report cards come home, sit down with your child and look over the work.  Ask them how they feel about their work.  Together, choose some things that are areas of strength, where your child feels confident.  Then choose some areas that you both agree could use some improvement.  Involving students in looking at their progress and setting goals for their next steps to work on helps improve their academic performance.

 

 

 

Involving the learner

NOTE:  This post is the fourth in a miniseries on Assessment and Evaluation in the classroom, aimed at providing support both to my teacher colleagues and to parents of school children. 

Part of good assessment involves making it clear to the student what the goals or expectations are for their learning, and then also involving them in thinking about their learning, reflecting on how they are doing, and encouraging them to identify what they do well and where they have room for improvement or further practice.



In this photo, we see a student-friendly visual rubric outlining the different achievement levels.

And here is an example of a rubric that can be used with students to assess their learning about a unit of study in math:

	I need some more teaching about this.	I need some help to practice this.	I can practice this on my own.	I am ready to help others with this.
Name each Canadian Coin and its value	I need a lot of reminders to help me with the names and values of the coins.	I need some reminders about the names and values of the coins.	I know the names and values of the coins, but I sometimes make a mistake	I know the names and values of the coins.  I am confident and I rarely make a mistake.
Find the value of a group of coins	With help, I can sometimes find the value of simple groupings of coins.	With help, I can usually find the correct value of some different groupings of coins.	On my own, I can usually find the correct value of some different groupings of coins.	On my own, I can almost always find the correct value of many different groupings of coins.
Given a group of coins, tell the value of the whole group	With help, I can sometimes tell the value with some accuracy.	With help, I can usually tell the value with good accuracy.	On my own, I can usually tell the value with good accuracy	On my own, I can almost always tell the value with great accuracy.
Given a value in cents, choose coins to represent that value	With help, I can show the value.  I can show it in one way.	I can sometimes show the value. I can show it in one or two ways.	I can usually show the value.  I can show the value in a few ways.	I can always show the value.  I can show the value in a few ways.

 

New Ways to Assess

NOTE:  This post is the third in a miniseries on Assessment and Evaluation in the classroom, aimed at providing support both to my teacher colleagues and to parents of school children. 

Whether you’re a parent or a teacher reading this blog, chances are high you spent over a decade in a traditional public education setting and you’re likely very familiar with your teachers using quizzes, tests, and pencil and paper assignments to assess your learning.  But good teaching practice today extends to using a much wider range of ways to assess student learning.  Today I’ll be offering some examples as a way to help parents recognize assessment activities that might be happening in their child’s classroom and as a way to offer inspiration to teaching colleagues looking for fresh ideas.

 

·         Observing students and making notes on a chart or post-it notes

·         Conferencing with students

·         Having students do hands-on tasks

·         Using a checklist

·         Asking students to self-assess their learning

·         Asking a student to quiz the teacher by creating a question for the teacher, and then verifying if the teacher has the correct answer

·         Looking through a portfolio of work

·         Asking students to give a presentation

·         Students teach a skill or concept to their peers

·         Asking students to show their answer in more than one way

·         Asking students to write a journal or blog about their learning

What does Assessment look like?

NOTE:  This post is the second in a miniseries on Assessment and Evaluation in the classroom, aimed at providing support both to my teacher colleagues and to parents of school children. 

What does Assessment look like?

Assessment takes place before, during and after every kind of learning.  It can be either formal or informal.  It can include traditional tests, quizzes and pencil and paper assignments.  But it also includes observation, presentations, performance tasks, interviews, checklists, and ongoing oral and written student work.  Because a lot of today’s assessment is informal and ongoing it may not appear visible to parents and sometimes not even to the students themselves.  But the effective classroom teacher is keeping checklists, observation notes, anecdotal records, and maybe even photographs of student work to help him/her make decisions about the student learning that happens in their class every day.

Here assessment looks like a student using what she knows about floating and sinking to design a “boat” that will hold 10 marbles. She explains her design to the teacher and the class, and the teacher takes  a photo to include in the student’s folder for easy reference when it is time to complete the end of unit evaluation.

Assessment might also look like a standard diagnostic tool.
Here, a running record offers good diagnostic information as well as indications of progression in student reading and comprehension. 

What are Assessment and Evaluation?

NOTE:  This post is the first in a miniseries on Assessment and Evaluation in the classroom, aimed at providing support both to my teacher colleagues and to parents of school children.  

 

I think probably every parent of a school-aged child has wondered at one time or another just how teachers take a whole lot of class work and assignments and projects and stuff and somehow know how and what kids are learning, and then take the next step of turning it all into a grade and a comment on a report card.  I think it’s equally probable that every teacher or teacher candidate has wondered that too at some point in their career.  Teachers often talk about “assessing” and “evaluating” but sometimes it all sounds like a secret language.

This series on “Teachable Moments” aims to demystify current assessment and evaluation practices  for parents and for teachers who are either beginning their teacher practice or who want an opportunity to review and reflect on their teaching practice and perhaps get some new tips and ideas to implement in their classrooms.

Let’s start with what is the difference between assessment and evaluation.

What is Assessment? 
Assessment is the ongoing activity of collecting information and evidence about what a student knows and how they are learning, as well as how they are able to apply that information to other situations.  It includes looking at how a child learns. The teacher uses assessment to determine what a student has learned, needs to work on, and the best way to help them learn based on their learning style.

What is Evaluation?

Evaluation takes place at the end of a segment of learning.  It involves a judging of a student’s skills and demonstration of understanding in a particular area based on an established set of criteria.  In the public school system, the established criteria are the provincial curriculum guidelines for your child’s grade.  (You can see the Ontario curriculum documents and student exemplars on the Ministry of Education website here.)  The evaluation will most often be communicated by a grade on a report card summarizing  student’s achievement in an area of study, accompanied by a written comment on their progress in that area.

Candy from a Baby

Whoever said taking candy from a baby is a piece of cake ... has never tried to pry a half-eaten jolly rancher out of a toddler's hair.

Reading Buddies

One of the most common sights around here these days is my two girls reading books together.  Chloe loves to drag a book over to Maya and ask her to read it.  Maya happily obliges, "reading" the story from memory.  I love eavesdropping on them having conversations about the pictures and the stories.

Maya starts the day off by reading a book to Chloe

Debt Free Christmas Challenge

Check out my latest initiative: the Debt Free Christmas Challenge. 

You know I'm frugal and completely debt-adverse. Now I'm helping others navigate the challenge of overspending during the holidays. 

Just a test post

Just testing to see if I can post.  We've upgraded our PC to Windows 8 and some things aren't working well with it yet.

Me Time

Yesterday morning, as I drove myself to the local mall with the music turned up loud I began singing along loudly (and shamelessly off-key) to a pop song with less-than-child-friendly lyrics. That's when the sense of giddiness really hit me.  You see, I was on my way to the mall ALONE, no children in tow.  To shop for stuff for ME.  No groceries, no home decor, no children's birthday gifts, just new clothes for ME. 

It felt strange to just park and walk into the mall.  No stroller to unfold, no child carrier to strap on, no children to herd.  Amazing.  I had a spring in my step.

Then my day got even better.  The clearance sale rack of my favourite clothing store was heavily populated with items in my size.  The regular racks also contained many markdowns.  The sales staff were friendly, but let me do my own thing.  For once, my dilemma lay not in finding something that fit, but in the fact that my "yes" pile grew so quickly that I began to become concerned my credit card might go into shock if I brought all of them home.  In all, after weeding down my selections a bit, I still came home with 13 new items.  THIRTEEN.  How will my friends recognize me if I'm not wearing the same rotation of 2 pairs of capris, 2 skorts, and 6 t-shirts that have become my mommy uniform?

And then, just to top off my morning, I made a quick side trip to Food Basics to pick up some milk and 18 bags of frozen berries (on sale this week for $2.49).  I drove home contentedly, once again singing off-key.

I probably need to get out more.

Helping

I was tired and slightly grumpy late this afternoon after a good but very busy day so far. Maya asked for hot chocolate, and I told her she could have some, but I was going to make it for her.  She normally helps, which makes it so much more work, as we have to pull a chair over to the counter, wipe up spilt powder, be extra careful with the hot water, and try not to spill the milk we add after the water to make it the right drinking temperature. 

She asked why she couldn't help, and I sighed that I just wanted to do it myself. 

There was a slight pause, and then her sweet voice said "Mommy, helping is a way we show our love."

Yeah, my heart melted.  She got to help.

I'm Back

A busy life derailed by blog posting waaaaaay back ... and then I was behind and didn't want to write anything until I caught up ... and then I had a big writing block ... and then .... well, then I just procrastinated. 

But I'm back.

HADA 2012: Week 2 recap

I am participating in Hour-A-Day-April (HADA). For the month of April I commit to spending an hour every week day doing something that I otherwise have a hard time finding time for. The idea being that an hour a day of targeted effort can make a big difference towards accomplishing an intimidating To Do List. Here's a summary of my second week:

Day 9:  Took a long afternoon nap.  It was delightful!
Time: 2 hours

Day 10:  Got down on my hands and knees to clean the hardwood floors in the living and dining room.  I had planned to do the hallway too, but apparently I'm not as young as I used to be and my knees were done by the time I finished those rooms!  Also spent 2 hours clipping and organising coupons, and tonight I rounded out the day with a short but relaxing bath in the soaker tub. 
Time: 3 hours

Day 11:  Washed the hardwood floors in the front hall.  Started emptying and sorting the miscellaneous junk items in the office cabinet.
Time: 1 hour

Day 12: Lacking motivation, I barely scraped together maaayybe one hour doing miscellaneous tidying of stuff.
Time: 1 hour

Day 13: Emptied the hall closet and the mudroom of all shoes, coats, shoe rack, etc.  Maya helped me vacuum and wash the mudroom and closet.  Looked great by the end of the day ... except for the piles of shoes still in the front hall, waiting to be sorted.  If only they would jump back into their places on their own!
Time: 1 hour

Maya vacuums the mudroom

Day 14:  Was supposed to be one of my two days off this week, but we ended up accomplishing a lot. We took a morning trip to Home Depot with the whole family to pick up a bunch of materials for various projects around the house, including a new shelving unit for the basement. In the afternoon, Jeff stripped the deck of old stain in preparation for re-staining it in a few weeks, while Maya helped me assemble the new shelving unit in the basement.  I also swept out half the garage while the kids were playing outside.
Time: I'm counting 2 hours.

Total Hours of HADA tasks this week: 10 hours

Total so far this month:  17 hours

Wordless Wednesday

Relaxing on the neighbour's porch

Chloe has to join her big sister

Examining a dead leaf

They were ever so gently removing dead leaves from the neighbour's bed of tulips.

Surveying the results of their work

HADA 2012: Week 1 recap

I am participating in Hour-A-Day-April (HADA). For the month of April I commit to spending an hour every week day doing something that I otherwise have a hard time finding time for. The idea being that an hour a day of targeted effort can make a big difference towards accomplishing an intimidating To Do List. Here's a summary of my first week:



Day 1:  A day off, since it was Sunday and I've decided that Sunday is my day off every week, plus one other floating day per week.

Day 2: miscellaneous sorting, cleaning and picking up odds and ends. Most significantly, emptied the whole top drawer of my bathroom vanity, threw out a bunch of stuff, and put the useful items back in.
Time: 1 hour


Day 3:  Cleaned out my half of the bathroom vanity and de-junked two bedside table drawers. One medium-ish bag of garbage is ready to leave the house on garbage day. Then I headed to the basement to tidy my workbench (didn't even start on Jeff's!) and survey stuff in the basement to plan what else needs doing down there.
Time: 1 hour 15 minutes


Day 4: Sped through my closet pulling out clothes to get rid of, then dropped them off in the goodwill bin on our way home from shopping this morning. After lunch I headed to the basement and half-filled a box with books to take to the used book store before I got interrupted by Maya. Then I washed out the cabinet under the kitchen sink where we keep the garbage can and green bin -- also investigated the faucet leak I discovered while I was under there.
Time: 1hour 15 minutes.

Day 5:   Time out for myself at a coupon group meet-up. Met some great women, got some good coupons for myself, and a bunch to pass forward to a friend in need. We met at the new Ottawa IKEA, to which I had never been, and I got there early enough for a swift browse through (awesome!).  I also enjoyed an oh-so-yummy dessert and amazing decaf coffee (free refills!) all for the low price of just over $3. It was so nice to get out (after a SUPER gruelling day with the kids!) and then to come home to a quiet house, with children already in bed asleep.

Total: 1 hour  (I'm only counting the first hour, because once I'm out enjoying myself it's  not really HADA.  It's making the time to get out in the first place that's the issue!)

Day 6: Two and a half hours spent folding and putting away laundry, purging more items from the closet, untangling a basket of necklaces and deciding what to keep and what to get rid of, and dusting the bedroom dressers. Who knew that our bedroom furniture does not, in fact, have a grey felt cover, but is actually wood underneath all that dust?

Total: 2.5 hours

Days 7 and 8:  Days off!

Total hours of HADA tasks at the end of week 1:  7 hours!

Another teachable moment

 I left my 17 month old at the lunch table happily chewing on her slice of bread and cream cheese while I attended to various other tasks today. She got bored. It turns out partly dried out cream cheese is REALLY hard to scrub off of a wiggly toddler.  Lesson learned:  clean up cream cheese without delay!

Next task ... dealing with the globs of cream cheese on the table, chair, floor ...

Hour-A-Day-April 2012

My friend Jule Ann has re-issued her Hour a Day April challenge in order to provide herself and others with some motivation to get to those tasks around the house that we never seem to get around to. I really enjoyed the HADA challenge last year, and accomplished a lot. 

So again this year for the month of April I commit to spending an hour every day doing something that I otherwise have a hard time finding time for. The idea being that an hour a day of targeted effort can make a big difference towards accomplishing an intimidating To Do List. It doesn't have to be one consecutive hour. Set a timer when you start and if you get interrupted by kids, your husband, a neighbour dropping by or whatever then just stop the clock and resume your hour later on in the day.

Want to participate with me? Here's an abridged version of the guidelines (see the link above for Jule Ann's original)

1. Think of something that you normally have a hard time finding time for. Sewing, cleaning, painting, organising, playing basketball, crossing things off your honey-do list, it's up to you! It can be one big project, or a bunch of little projects.
2. Spend an hour every day working on your chosen project(s). Set a timer and stick to it. You have all day to squeeze in that hour, even five or ten minutes at a time. But by the end of the day, make sure you've clocked that hour. If the best way for you to get in your hour is to get up early, get up early. If you clean best after everyone else goes to bed, skip CSI. It's only for a month.
3. Take one day off a week.
4. Keep others updated on your progress. Comment on this blog. Blog about it yourself, and send me the link. Tweet about it on Twitter and use the hash tag #HADA (Hour-A-Day April). Take pictures and post them to your blog. Phone up your mom. Put a gold star on a chart.
5. Don't give up. Missed a day? Keep going. Even if you only do half the days, that's still 15 hours more productivity than your April would have otherwise had.
6. Celebrate when it's all over!

Adapt the rules as you see fit. I'm including on my list things that I would enjoy doing too but never get around to -- I'll be using up some old rolls of 35mm film (that I found during HADA last year and, um, never did anything with) and also working on my girls' baby books in addition to tackling mountains of unfolded laundry and organising junk in the basement.

I'm also planning to do only 5 days a week this year, instead of 6.  I plan to take Saturdays and Sundays off , but if I miss a day earlier in the week, I'll have to make it up on Saturday.

I'll be blogging my progress here, and also chatting about it on Facebook. I hope you'll join me, or follow along with my progress.