Personal Mexican Breakfast Bowls

This is a super easy to make crowd pleaser for breakfast. You'll need some oven safe 12 oz. Cordon Blue Ramiken bowls. Recipe courtesy of Charlotte Kienast. 

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. Spray ramikens with cooking spray
3. Spread refried beans all along bottom (about 2 tbls) of the ramikens and make a little dip on top 
4. Pour 1 tbl. salsa on top of the little dip
5. Crunch up a few tortilla chips and put that on top
6. Put the ramikens on a cookie sheet and place in the oven for 10 minutes
7. Take the ramikens out and crack an egg in each 
8. Top with mexican cheese
9. Sprinkle a pinch of cumin or paprika or both
10. Lay one piece of foil on top of the ramikens and place back in the oven for 10-15 more minutes. It depends if you like your egg runny or cooked through....just keep checking to see 
11. Add the yummy toppings...chopped tomatoes, avocados, cilantro, sour cream, pink peppercorns (so good), and squeeze some lime
12. Enjoy! 

Ingredients: 
1 can of refried beans (pinto or black) feeds 4
salsa
tortilla chips
Mexican cheese
eggs
cumin
paprika
tomato
avocado
cilantro
sour cream
pink peppercorn
lime

Letter Tracing Freebie

I love Teachers Pay Teacher (TPT) but I am broke in September. Here's a freebie I made for helping my own 4 year old and the kids in my Pre-K class trace uppercase letters.

Letter Tracing Worksheet: Uppercase

Instagram Photo Display

I am photo obsessed but feel like I take a ton and then don't see them again so I was inspired by a friend's photo of placecards at wedding displayed in this same way.

I had my Home Depot buddies (who should run when they see me lurking around by now but are always nice and used to Pinterest ladies) cut some 1.5" wood to my measurements (don't forget overlap). My hubby screwed the pieces of wood together at the corner (and had to "countersink" it too...whatever that means he is the brains behind construction and I have to beg him to do all projects).

Once my frame was complete I used some bright yellow spray paint. A few coats.

We hung it on 2 screws on the inside corners...it kinda bugs my hubby since you can see them but not me.

I ordered bakers twine in blue/white and tied it about every 6 inches down the side on both sides so it was pulled nice and tight.

I ordered polaroid size Instagram pictures from origrami and they are so cool. They even have the comment you made about the photo and the map of where it was taken on the back. I got 36 for $20 with free shipping. They are 4"x5" matte cards and come from Australia so it took 2 weeks but we were out of town so it was a nice surprise to see the cute box of pictures when we got home.

I bought some tiny wooden clothespins at Hobby Lobby and stuck on some light blue rhinestone stickers to make them match our wooden sign that covers our fuse box.

It was fun to hang the photos and I plan on actually rotating them more often (hope it happens). I love it and it was super cheap and easy!

 36 Instagram polaroids for $20...love the box and love the maps on the back

 The finished product...makes throwing away trash in the kitchen more entertaining at least

 Displays 24 Polaroids...don't look too closely at the last row I ran out of wooden clothespins for now

 Love the Baker's Twine 

And if it sparkles it's always better...they're little so I can get away with them in a house of boys 

M is for Mouse

Last week we celebrated the Letter M and I think that mice go perfectly with M. Our Houghton Mifflin Alphafriend was Mimi Mouse so we made a traveling book "Mimi Mouse likes to play with _____" and the kids had to write a word that started with M and draw a picture of it with Mimi Mouse. We send these "traveling books" home in a laminated cover to a new child each day (name cross off on the back). 

Mimi Mouse Traveling Book

 We read the book "Mouse Paint" by Ellen Stoll Walsh. I had a "mommy helper" read the book and we took red / yellow / blue color paddles and mixed colors on top of mice I traced from the book onto transparency paper (we had a big box of it in the supply closet at school since no one uses overhead projectors anymore). We also mixed colors and painted a color wheel with Q-Tips. We did tear art the next day. We pretended the footprint tracks (ex. red / blue) mixed together and turned the mouse a new color (ex. purple). 

Mixing colors on the light tables with "Mouse Paint"

Using Q-Tips to mix colors...love seeing the kids get excited realizing red + yellow makes orange, etc. 

Mouse Paint Tear Art 

We played mouse math. The kids would roll the dice and feed the mouse that correct number of cheese (yellow and oranges cut up sponges). We even did it whole group taking turns rolling so we could record some addition problems. 

Using GLAD pictoral input strategies we learned all about a mouse and recorded it in our ongoing GLAD journals. I have the parent draw the letters and animal / person to model on a white board. Then as the kids are coloring the volunteer goes around and dictates the date and a complete sentence of what the student has learned about (this week a mouse). 

We made mouse shelters/habitats out of blocks, legos, lincoln logs, and Magna Tiles. This was an independent center and I used rubbery mice I found around Halloween and some cat toy soft mice. They LOVED this! 

After reading "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" by Laura Numeroff we played the game "Cookies on a Plate." I combine 2 boxes of this game so we have enough cookies for each student to try to put their 10 cookies on a plate first. 

We also made another traveling book with our own version of the story. "If you give a _____ a _____ she/he will probably want ______." I loved how creative they got. Some examples, "If you give Lilly a hot dog she'll probably want some ketchup" or "If you give Lucy a fairy she'll probably want a want." 

Our chant/song for the week. A little gruesome, but the kids think it's funny and it reminds us why we don't want mice in our kitchen....although I doubt anyone would run around cutting off their tails off with a knife. 

 And the BEST....mouse hats! This center is exhausting, but look how cute they kids are in them. Especially with a little piece of cheese to nibble on!!! 

One of my fabulous mommy helpers and her little mouse 

We had such a fun week! M is for Mouse in Preppie-K! 

A is for Apple

A is for Apple! We celebrated 2 weeks in Pre-K with an apple celebration for letter A!

 Apple Glyph...fun to see how different the kids were

 Apple GLAD strategy (pictoral input)

 Directed drawing of Johnny Appleseed! So cute!

 Apple Thinking Map to think of all words that start with A including all our friends that start with A

 Apple Memory matching upper and lower case letters

 After reading Dr. Seuss' "10 Apples Up on Top" we made unifix cubes with 2 colors of "apples" touching to a total of 10 then did Do A Dot circles to represent our towers of 10 

 Apple Tear Art

 Apple Math....roll the dice...apples (spray painted apples in a tree) add some more and it made for a great addition center

 Balancing apples on our head

 Apple Pie party on Friday 

 Weighing our apples with our friends to see whose was heavier 

 Decorating our apples for homework

 Cutting our apple in half to see the "Red House, with NO doors, and NO window, and a STAR inside." 

 Apple Investigation...measuring how long our apples were in bears 

 Apple Necklace 

 Hip Hip Hooray for Apple Day! 

 After tasting apple chips, apple slices, apple juice, and applesauce we graphed our favorite apple product 

 Apple Flow Chart was also our homework for week 2 

GLAD (pictoral input) for Johnny Appleseed

WE LOVED studying about Apples in Pre-K!!!!