Pinterest Approved Recipe Link-Up: May Edition

Good Morning Teacher Friends! 

I'm back again with my buddies Angelia and Nicole for another Pinterest Approved Recipe Link-Up. I'm so excited to find some new recipes and test them out over the summer. 

If you're new to this link-up, welcome! We are so happy to have you here today. You can check out this post to find out a little more about this link-up.

The rules for this link-up are simple, though:

Let's get started!

Summer is right around the corner for many of you, which means lots of time to spend with family and friends. What better way to spend your time than through a BBQ?! My husband and I love having friends over and we usually always use our grill when throwing parties. One of our all time favorite grilling recipes are these Chipotle Turkey Burgers. 

I'm not a big fan of beef, and I love all things spicy--so these burgers are right up my alley! The turkey mixture is mixed up with chipotle peppers and garlic. #heavenly

Switch It Up!

Like I said, these burgers are our go-to and we eat them quite often. I get bored with eating the same things easily, so we often like to switch it up on how we serve it. Here are some ideas:

1. Add diced jalapenos to the guacamole mixture for an added kick.

2. If you're feeling lazy, just add sliced avocado instead of guacamole.

3. Serve it on a bun or wrapped in lettuce.

4. Add sautéed mushrooms and onions. 

5. Serve your burgers up with some cheese. 

If you'd like to use these images in  your post, feel free to snag them below:

Thank you for stopping by today and we hope you'll link-up with us :)
We will back again on June 19 to share more new recipes!

Aloha,

Courtney

An InLinkz Link-up

Differentiated Elapsed Time Task Cards!

Happy Sunday! I hope you all had a productive weekend and are ready for this first long week back at school! This weekend I was busy finishing up a set of Differentiated Elapsed Time Task Cards!

Elapsed time is always a difficult concept for my third graders to understand-so it is helpful that we work on this skill later in the year. Students need a ton of practice with elapsed time-especially with solving their problems using a number line. 

So far, we've spent a week on introducing and practicing with this skill…and like all other concepts, I have students that are at all different levels. I decided to create these task cards so that my students can practice elapsed time and be working with problems that are doable for them. I love to use task cards in my classroom because 1) it saves on copies. To have all of these problems on worksheets would be a bajillion copies for my class of 25 students. 2) My students LOVE Task Cards!!

No Joke-when I tell my kids that we will be using task cards…they actually cheer! Some ways we use task cards in our class are: 

1) For whole class reviews. I will usually do some type of review game and award points to different teams.

2) A game of SCOOT. To play SCOOT-each child gets one task card to place on their desk along with a recording sheet. They solve the card that is at their desk and wait quietly until the teacher calls out 'SCOOT'. At this time, all students will scoot to the next seat and answer the card at that desk. All they take with them are their recording sheets and pencils. The task cards stay at the student desk. Continue this pattern until students are back to their original seat. My students LOVE to play this game!

3) To pull up quick problems to give to kids while working with small groups

4)Centers. Sometimes the students just take a few cards at a time and then head back to their seats to solve the problems. Other times I might set up a math scavenger hunt. I will post cards up throughout the room and students will need to find the card then solve it on their recording sheet. 

As you can see- there are a ton of different ways to use task cards in your classroom. These are just a few ideas of how we use task cards in my classroom :)

This set contains 12 beginner level cards for those who still need extra reinforcement/practice with the basics. All of these cards have problems that are very basic and work with 30 minute, 15 minute, and hourly increments. 

There are also 24 on-level cards (pink set) which have a variety of problems that require students to solve elapsed time in 2 different ways to the nearest minute. One way they may be asked to solve is to figure out the elapsed time when given the start time and end time. Another way they may be asked to solve is to find the end time when given the start time and elapsed time. 

The last set is for those students who need an extra challenge. These cards are multi-step and require students to figure out the elapsed time when a break is taken, or to work backwards to find the start time. 

Each of the 3 sets come with 2 different recording sheets. One sheet will require students to show their work and number lines in the boxes provided. The other sheet will just require students to write their answer (if solving on a white board or piece of paper). 

Option 1

Option 2

This set of task cards will eventually be included in my Telling Time Unit

..which is still a work in progress. This is turning out to be a much bigger project that I initially intended  but I hope to be done soon. 

If you're interested in purchasing my new Elapsed Time Task Card set..they're up in my TPT store and will be marked down for the rest of this week! 

Now I leave you with some photos from my Winter Break in California :) 

Yummy In-N-Out Burger. We don't have this in Hawaii so this is always a must stop!

I couldn't believe how cheap the lettuce was! 

Every time I go to California, I always need stop to get some THRIFTY's Ice Cream!!

We made homemade dinner for my Grandparents

Tako (Octopus) and cucumbers with Kimchi paste

Hamachi sashimi (yellowtail)

2 of my Bridesmaids and I out to dinner :)

First time rolling sushi for New Years day :)

Pretty manju

Went on a hike in Laguna Beach with my cousins and sister-in law

Yummy lunch out in Laguna

This was our beautiful view during lunch!

Cousins and I prepared a home-made Italian dinner night

Filling for our ravioli.

Add caption

prepping ravioli

Mushroom pasta. Did I mention this was homemade pasta?

Head to my Instagram Page to watch a video of us making the pasta!

Our yummy feast!

DIY December Linky #1: Melted Snowman Cookies

Happy Sunday!

This month I have been doing a lot of DIY and baking projects for the holidays. I decided that I wanted to share it with you all and since I know that you are all a bunch of creative and crafty teachers- I want to see what you've been DIY-ing this month! SO..I present to you a brand new Linky:

Yesterday, my baking buddy and I  (another teacher) got together to make some Melted Snowman Cookies for our students. 

I absolutely love baking and decorating cookies, so this was a totally fun project for me! 

We started off by making our sugar cookies from scratch. This was my first time making sugar cookies and it was pretty easy! I have a really yummy recipe if you're interested. 

Click the photo above to download a copy of this recipe :) 

We then used circle cutters to cut the dough-then baked the cookies. 

The cookies will need to stay in the oven for a bit longer than the 15 minutes the recipe suggests. We just took a peek into the oven to make sure they were browned around the edges. These are what our pre-decorated cookies looked like. 

We then made our frosting using water, meringue powder, and some powdered sugar. 

We had to experiment better with how we liked the frosting. As you can see..we originally tried frosting the entire cookie-but didn't like that. We ended up using a plastic baggie to outline the melted snow look. Make sure to pop the marshmallows on before your frosting hardens. 

We then added some food coloring to the frosting-and used plastic bags (instead of piping bags) to draw on the eyes, nose, arms, and buttons. 

You could get fancy and add scarves, bows, and earmuffs but we were running low on frosting since we made 75 cookies! 

We then bagged each cookie into a plastic Ziplock Sandwich bag..and added these cute topper tags. I absolutely love how they turned out! It makes the packaging look much fancier!

The back of the tag also lists the ingredients.

If you're interested in using these tags-you can download them for free in my TPT Store. This is an editable file (for ingredients and teacher name). Please leave some feedback if you do decide to use these tags :) 

If you'd like to share any of your DIY Holiday Projects from this month-or from the past I would love for you to link up below! I always love getting new ideas and definitely would like to add some new projects to my to-do list! If you don't have a blog-feel free to leave your ideas in the comment section :) 

Thank you for sharing and Happy DIY-ing!

Rules for this Linky:

1. Link the picture of your project to your blog post. 

2. Add the DIY December Linky button to your blog post with a link back to my page. 

3. Check out the other DIY Projects and leave some cheerful comments

Thanks so much for linking up!!

Christmas Cheer and 5 for Five Success

It's beginning to look and feel a lot like Christmas..and I'm totally loving it!!! This weekend was SO busy, I barely had time to keep up with everything going on (this seems to be the story of my life!). On Saturday, I went over to one of my old co-workers house (she let to teach at a new school) and another one of my co-workers came over..we decided that this year we would make gifts in hopes of saving some money this year. We ended up working ALL DAY but it was totally worth it. We made some chocolate covered pretzels..and baked some ghiradelli brownies that were SO GOOD!!

These are some of the pretzels we made. This was actually our very first batch. I'm sad I didn't take more pictures because we got really fancy with the decorating...

Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of the brownies but we packaged them up in cute little baggies. I was on amission to work quickly and get everything done since I needed to leave by 5:00 because we had my fiancée's birthday dinner at 6:30!

I found these cute little gift boxes...so we packaged everything up in these (brownies, choco. covered pretzels and a candy cane). 

We ended up making about 30+ of these goodie baskets. 

I was late to my dinner and ending up leaving at 6:30. I had to meet everyone at the dinner place and my fiancé ended up having to bring me clothes..We ate at this really awesome sushi place..best sushi I've ever eaten...but it's the kind of sushi that cost an arm and leg. our total tab for 5 people ended up $700!! The good thing though is that the sushi chef/owner ended up packing us a to go container of sushi since they would be closed the next day and he didn't want the fish to go to waste.

So this was lunch the next day :0

Sunday was my fiancés birthday so we spent the day doing errands, decorating the tree and wrapping presents :)

We also went to dinner with his parents at an italian restaurant.. 

He got some kind of meat and pasta with shrimp

 I got salmon, pasta, and shrimp

Before I knew it..It's Monday and I'm headed into work. I got surprised with a GIANT Christmas tree this morning :)

LOL. This was totally unexpected. I had a student on Friday that asked me if she could bring in a tree...I assumed it was one of those tiny 3 ft. trees. She comes in today with her mom wheeling this HUGE cart with this huge tree. HAHA. I guess I learned my lesson to never assume and always ask. The kids were totally surprised and absolutely love it! I must admit..I'm loving it too :) 

Now it's Monday and time for my 5 for Five with Jenn and Jessica!! 

For those of you who are new to this...I am listing 5 goals that I hope to accomplish in the next 5 days!!

Goals that have been accomplished will be in green!

Red is a failure :(

Orange is a semi-accomplishemnt! 

1. Catch up on the past 5 weeks of grading that I have fallen behind on! 

Woohoo!! Totally caught up on this one :) Feels sooo good!

2. Put up my Christmas Tree and decorations!!

Yay!! Totally got this done too...I love how cheery it makes my house seem :)

3. Head to the mall and start my shopping lists!!

Not only did I start..I'm ALMOSt done!

4. Get our faculty Christmas Party planned!

CHECK!

5. Cut vinyl and label student ornaments for Christmas gifts for parents.

Got this done on Saturday as well...Well, my co-workers husband pretty much did this part for me!! :) I'll be sharing the kids' ornaments tomorrow.  They're almost done..just putting finishing touches tomorrow. Be sure to check back..they are absolutely adorable!!

OMG! Total success this week :) So happy!!

Hoping next week will be just as successful!

1. Finish shopping and wrapping ALL gifts.

2. Clean the house (it's a total mess again)

3. Paint my nails and toenails in a Christmasy theme

4. Make a hair appointment

I haven't got my hair done since May!! It's so bad but I just don't have the time and money...My hair dresser is in the opposite direction of traffic from where I work. I'm hoping to get an appointment sometime during the break.

5. Make gift baskets for grade level!

This was a long post. Have a great rest of the week. Check back tomorrow or Wednesday for our Christmas ornaments!