Last One in Is a Rotten Egg!

Last One in Is a Rotten Egg! by Diane DeGroat features my two favorite opossum siblings, Gilbert and Lola, who are very excited about their cousin Wally visiting. That is until Wally arrives and is so competitive about everything from getting to the lunch table first to finding the most eggs in the Easter egg hunt. Gilbert and Lola work together to find their eggs, while Wally finds as many as he can. When Gilbert and Lola find the prized golden egg, Wally gets it down for them, then keeps it for himself! Will Lola get credit for finding the golden egg? Or will Wally keep it for his own? You'll have to read to find out. I'll give you a hint, the ending is one that you and your kiddies will love.

Best Homemade Granola Bars

Chewy granola bars are pretty much a staple in our house. My kids love them and I tend to grab them for a quick breakfast most weekday mornings. For months my husband has been talking about making our own granola and I took it one step further with granola bars. I don't have anything against granola but it's crunchy and I'm definitely more of a chewy kind of girl. Plus I feel like chewy is more kid friendly.

What I really love about these granola bars is that I know exactly what's in them. They contain no eggs, no butter and my favorite, no preservatives. I'm not going to get on my soapbox about preservatives right now, but one of my New Year's resolutions for 2014 is eat fewer of them. Who ever thought I would be more about homemade and less about store bought convenience? Definitely not my Mom I bet.

After pouring over many recipes for granola and granola bars, I chose Chewy Date Granola Bars by Busy in Brooklyn to try out.

You need:

  • 3/4 cup white whole wheat flour
  • 3/4 cup quick oats
  • 1/3 cup shredded coconut
  • 1/3 cup ground flaxseed
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
  • 5 tablespoon pure maple syrup
  • 3/4 cup brown sugar
  • 4 tablespoons coconut oil (solidified)
  • 1/2 cup sliced almonds
  • 8 dates

First, I prepped the dates by pitting them and giving them a rough chop.

Then, I put all of the ingredients into a bowl. Doesn't that sound easy? Well, it is. How refreshing to be able to put all of the ingredients in one place?

After all the ingredients are in the bowl I mixed the ingredients with my hands to form a large ball of dough. The coconut oil will give your hands a super soft feel when you are finished.

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Next, I used parchment paper to line a 9 X 9 stoneware pan. I spread the granola dough into the pan evenly and baked in a 350 degree oven for exactly 22 minutes.

While the Chewy Almond Date Bars were baking, I decided to make a more kid friendly version for my little ones. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm supremely confident that my kids would eat these granola bars, but I wanted a little something fun. My son loves the Quaker Chewy S'mores granola bars, so I made an at home version of the S'mores. Instead of dates and almonds, I substituted them with 1/2 cup of Jet-Puffed Mallow Bits Marshmallows (the really tiny marshmallows) and a 1/2 cup of mini-chocolate chips.

After baking and cooling, the parchment paper made it really easy to lift the granola out of the baking pan for cutting. I cut the granola bars into tenths-half and then 5 semi-equal rectangles (whoa, fractions).

For storing I placed all the bars that made it past the initial tasting in an airtight container with pieces of parchment between each bar so they wouldn't stick together.

I thought for sure these granola bars would be good, but they far exceeded my expectations. There will be no more store bought granola bars in this house!

 

Chewy Almond Date Granola Bars

Ingredients:

  • 3/4 cup white whole wheat flour
  • 3/4 cup quick oats
  • 1/3 cup shredded coconut
  • 1/3 cup ground flaxseed
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
  • 5 tablespoon pure maple syrup
  • 3/4 cup brown sugar
  • 4 tablespoons coconut oil (solidified)
  • 1/2 cup sliced almonds
  • 8 dates

1) Pit and roughly chop the dates.

2) Place all ingredients into a large bowl.

3) Mix the ingredients until they are combined.

4) Spread granola mix into a parchment lined 9 x 9 baking pan.

5) Bake at 350 degrees for 22 minutes.

6) Cool.

7) Cut into bars.

8) Enjoy!

 

Chewy S'mores Granola Bars

Ingredients:

  • 3/4 cup white whole wheat flour
  • 3/4 cup quick oats
  • 1/3 cup shredded coconut
  • 1/3 cup ground flaxseed
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
  • 5 tablespoon pure maple syrup
  • 3/4 cup brown sugar
  • 4 tablespoons coconut oil (solidified)
  • 1/2 cup Jet-Puffed Mallow Bits
  • 1/2 cup mini-chocolate chips

1) Pit and roughly chop the dates.

2) Place all ingredients into a large bowl.

3) Mix the ingredients until they are combined.

4) Spread granola mix into a parchment lined 9 x 9 baking pan.

5) Bake at 350 degrees for 22 minutes.

6) Cool.

7) Cut into bars.

8) Enjoy!

Alphabet Mystery

As Charley's little letters get lined up in their beds and call out their names, they discover that little x is missing along with one of Charley's pencils. So what do they do? The little letters fly on a pencil out into the night to search for him and find him a Master M's castle. Little x is sad because he's rarely ever used. Can the other little letters convince little x to come home? Check out this fun tale written by Audrey Wood and illustrated by Bruce Wood. My four year old son loved pointing to the letters and reading the alphabet song over and over again. The best part is that it shows the lowercase letters, which is great for practicing lowercase alphabet recognition. Educational and fun, now that's a great story in my book!

Alphabet Mystery
By Audrey Wood

Guided Reading

I feel like I'm always talking about the importance and fun associated with reading books to your child. But what do you do when your child wants to read to you? Or when your child brings home a book from school to read for homework? For many emergent and beginning readers you can follow a simple plan that includes basic before, during and after reading activities. In the classroom, I use this method to teach my guided reading groups.

In guided reading, teachers provide support to small groups of readers to teach reading strategies such as sounding out words (decoding) and comprehension. Students are placed in books at their instructional reading level, the level where they are making some errors but not so many errors that they can't understand or enjoy the story. Here's how you can apply a guided reading lesson at home.

Before Reading

The first thing you have to do is find an appropriate book. I could write an entire post on choosing a proper text (coming soon).  My son is an emergent reader, who is working on developing his concept of word. He has learned 10-15 sight words, which he can read in isolation (written on cards) as well as in text. So, I chose a very repetitive text with three word sentences. Two of the words in the sentence were sight words he knew and the third word was easy to figure out based on the picture. Repetitive texts with picture support are great for very early readers who think they "can't read" because it helps build their confidence as readers. They are learning to make connections between sight words they know and starting using beginning letters and pictures to figure out words they otherwise wouldn't recognize.

When I told my son that I was going to get him to read me a book, the first words out of his mouth were, "But unfortunately Mommy, I can't read." (Yes, somehow, unfortunately has become a staple in his everyday vocabulary). I replied with, "Of course you can." I started by showing him the front cover of the book.

Always introduce the book. I started by pointing to the title of the book and saying, "The book we are going to read today is called Lunch." Then ask a question to build your child's interest in the book and to build background knowledge. I said, "What are some things that you like to eat for lunch?" My son replied with, "beggie sticks." I'm really not making this up. In his classroom they have been learning about healthy snacks and every day he wants me to give him veggie sticks, which is pretty awesome, I think. Then he started saying things that were pictured on the front cover like bananas, apples and sandwiches.

Next, take a picture walk of the story. A picture walk is simply turning through the pages and looking at and talking about the pictures in the story.

I sometimes cover up the words so they are not a distraction for those kids who want to just jump right into reading. On each page, I asked, "What is she getting for lunch now?" My son would say whatever picture was on the page. In this case the girl was getting an apple. On this particular page he decided to cover up the words because I told him we were only going to look at the pictures.

During Reading

After introducing the story, building background knowledge and taking a picture walk, you are now ready to have your child actually read the story. Have your child use his/her finger to touch each word as you read the words on each page to practice concept of word (matching spoken words to text). You can read the story with your child (choral reading) or help your child as needed depending on your child's reading level. We read the story two times. The first time we read together and the second time my son read the story to me. For this lesson we really focused on using the pictures to help figure out the last word on the page. My son easily caught onto this and was quickly reading the story on his own.

Once my son knew the pattern to the story, he wanted to read really fast and skim his finger under the text. I did have to slow him down a few times so that he was touching each word as he said it and not just memorizing the pattern and looking at the picture for the last word.

After Reading

It's important to follow up the reading with some sort of activity that ties to the story to end the lesson. You can do a variety of things from retelling to finding words in the story to drawing a picture of something relating to the book. After we read the story, I closed the book and asked my son to tell me what the girl got for lunch in the story. He remembered everything except the pizza. Encourage your child to not look back in the book, this will get them thinking about paying attention to the story while they are reading. Later, I thought, I should have asked him to draw a picture of what the girl had on her tray or what his favorite lunch would be. Perhaps another time.