Mini Brownie Treats

Continuing my experiments with my Taste of Home Easy Weeknight Dinners, I explored the dessert section to find inspiration for my birthday treat. Because I have more students this year than I have ever had before, I needed something small but delicious. These Mini Brownie Treats (pg. 306) are adorable and use very few ingredients. Another plus for these gems is that I didn't have to worry about trying to cut a pan of brownies evenly for 42 students!

The finished product cooling in the tin. 

The brownie bites use a brownie box mix. I added mini chocolate chips to the batter to add a little bit extra. 

My finished product with the book picture. 

I am a big fan of Hershey's hugs, so this was a great opportunity to get to sneak a couple as I baked. 


These were incredibly easy to make (Honestly, the most difficult part of the process was unwrapping all the hugs.), and my students loved them. 

BBQ Meat Loaf Minis

Last November, a friend and I went to a Taste of Home Cooking School event in Manawa, Wisconsin. I have been wanting to attend one of these for a while, so I was very excited to be able to go! I told myself that I wasn't going to buy any cookbooks at the event because I have so many the way it is... but this is me, and I should have known better. I ended up purchasing Taste of Home Easy Weeknight Dinners. I made a couple recipes during last school year, but I didn't use it as often as I could have. 

This school year, I resolved to bring more leftovers for lunch instead of cold sandwiches all the time. So I'm thinking I will make one or two recipes from Easy Weeknight Dinners each week, and I can then have lunch for the week. 

This week, I decided to try a recipe that is already portioned out -- BBQ Meat Loaf Minis (page 7). I am a huge fan of meat loaf and I was very intrigued by the use of barbecue sauce and cheese! The recipe basically has 4 ingredients: stuffing mix, ground meat, barbecue sauce and cheese. Water is added. I used Cornbread stuffing and honey barbecue sauce. 

The cheese isn't supposed to go in with the rest of the ingredients, but I couldn't resist adding more cheesy flavor to the mix. The meat loaf is baked in a muffin tin. At first it didn't seem like the amount of beef mixture was going to be enough for 12 "muffins," but the recipe made exactly 12 mini meat loafs.  I was pleased with the end result compared to the picture from the book. My mini loaves probably could have used more cheese on top to look more like the picture! I loved the barbecue flavor added to the beef mixture. The stuffing flavor was a little overpowering in the finished product. If I make this again, which I probably will put barbecue sauce in my meatloaf whether I use this exact recipe again or not, I will probably use more meat and add some extra spice. 

Back Pack Drop Off Scavenger Hunt

A lot has happened since my last post to this blog... this could really go without saying, it has been two years. Long story short, I am now a reading and language arts teacher in Wrightstown, Wisconsin, approximately twenty minutes from my hometown, and I am finally surrounded by my family in close proximity. St. Clare School does things a little differently than St. Mary School, so I will be spending a lot of time getting acclimated to my new surroundings. I also completed course work in August to earn my reading teacher certification through Viterbo University. My classes over the past year have given me the opportunity to get up close and personal with two wonderful books I can't recommend enough! (Along with many other wonderful resources!)

The Book Whisperer
by Donalyn Miller

Igniting a Passion for Reading
Dr. Steven L. Layne

My first bulletin board at St. Clare School --
also an answer to a scavenger hunt question

My new classroom will be home base for the sixth graders and the reading and language arts room for sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. My new students were in this classroom all day last year as fifth graders, so it was important to me that it didn't look exactly like their old room, but still had a comforting familiarity. There was a flag left hanging in the room that I almost put in the hallway to be disposed off. Thankfully, someone mentioned that the students had made it together for a project or trip. I decided it was essential to find a place for it in my classroom and hoped the students would notice.

The Tuesday before school started (August 25), my brand new students brought their school supplies to Back Pack Drop Off  Night to see their old teacher and meet the two new teachers at school. I wanted to have an activity for them to do when they dropped off their materials that would encourage them to look around the room and not just drop their things off and leave without a glance my way. I decided to have a scavenger hunt.

Scavenger Hunt

When the students entered the room, their parents signed a sheet letting me know the best way to contact them while the students found their desk and put their supplies away. There were instructions on the board to tell me their favorite book and grab a scavenger hunt clue from the table. This was a sneaky way for me to assess how well they could follow directions written on the board. There were seven questions for the students to choose from:

1) Name a movie represented on Miss Bohman's desk. (I have a minion mug from Despicable Me, an ET doll from ET, and my key chain is connected to a Toy Story lanyard.)

The bee by the flag

2) Which word on the 'Be' bulletin board describes you? (See the bulletin board above.)

3) What insect is hanging out by the American flag? (There is a bee on the wall with the words "'Hive' read something worth 'buzzing' about!")

A day without laughter...

4) A Day without ____________________________ is a day wasted. (One student was sure she had the right answer when she proudly exclaimed "school!")


5) What color dot will you find on a historical fiction book? (For this they had to look at the library guide to see that a green dot is found on all historical fictions.)

6) Name one of the featured authors. (There are certain authors that my students in Bloomington really loved. As a result, I have influxes of books by those particular authors: Gary Paulsen, AVI, Andrew Clements, Roald Dahl, Lurlene McDainel, Jean Craighead George, Coleen Murtagh Paratore, and Beverly Cleary.)

featured authors

Library guide, checkout,
Miss Bohman is reading...

7) What book is Miss Bohman reading? (I found this idea in Igniting a Passion for Reading by Dr. Steven Layne after looking for a way to expand on ideas in Donalyn Miller's The Book Whisperer. Both wonderfully insightful people point out that our students seeing us as readers is very important to building lifelong learners. I was reading Rump on Back Pack Drop Off Day.)

6th grade information board

8) When is Miss Bohman's birthday? I have included my birthday on the birthday chart at the front of the room. They had to dig a little deeper to find my name on this one! Also-- the picture is from before the birthdays were written on the chart!

The students had fun exploring the room to find the correct answers, and they also got a feel for the room they would be entering on the first day of school. Once they found their answer, the students wrote their name, question number, and answer on a scrap sheet of paper. On the first day of school, I chose a winner from the correct responses, and we talked about each of the answers to the questions as a group.

I hope your year has started off as wonderfully as mine!

~Amy