Recipes Our Mothers Love

This is the week I dread: the week before standardized testing. It's the week we cram and review all we have taught the past year. In a word: stress. But this year I decided that we needed a little diversion, and being the week before Mother's Day, we had a wonderful opportunity to work on our gift.

The past few years, I have culminated a poetry unit with the children writing a multi-stanza poem honoring their mother. It always gets rave reviews, but this year I was inspired by Lindsey at All Things Bright and Beautiful. Lindsey is a first year teacher and blogged about her students creating a class recipe book. I told her I loved the idea and that I was going to "steal" it... And so I did! For Mother's Day!

The children all brought recipes from home, telling their moms that they needed one for a math project on measurement. (Well, they were telling the truth in a round-about way!) They loved the secret and the surprise they had in store for their moms. The day the recipes were due, they literally stormed my desk with "Look! Look! Look at my recipe!" They later rewrote the directions in paragraph form, using sequencing and transition words (i.e. first, next, then, meanwhile, last, etc.) so as to cover state Language arts standards. We also discussed units of measurement - Go math standards! (And don't you know I used the paragraph as a writing grade?!)

They had such fun typing their recipes out, illustrating the pages, and sharing them with the class. And what great recipes! After making 25 copies (You know I had to have one!), I passed them out to the kids. I think they turned out too cute!


Of course I had to add my own recipe Golden Day Banana Bread...

Happy Mother's Day Weekend!