Live what you love.

Good Evening! It feels so strange sat writing this post while it's going dark outside. Is it a sign that Autumn is definitely on the way? or maybe it's just because I am writing my post late... again! Ooopsy :) It has been a super busy week as I finally starting teaching my own class on Tuesday, YAY!! Even though it wasn't technically my first day at school it was still really exciting to get into MY classroom and do things my own way. As well as the first week of school I have had new glasses, been doing some more yoga and trying to spend time with Ryan too so it's been a really lovely week. I've made a deal with myself that I will try and leave work at school so I actually have a life besides teaching.

 

Despite this deal I've still been spending a lot of time looking teaching stuff on teachers pet and Pinterest, it is all so cute that I wish my classroom was big enough. I must say that the pencil hospital and caught you being good ideas I talked about before have been VERY successful in this first week. I've also watched a few episodes of New Girl ready for the new season that starts on September 17th (American). Regular readers will know how much I LOVE Jessica Day and I hope that my teacher work-life balance will be just like hers in the coming year! 

Talking of Jessica Day, all avid New Girl fans will remember the Jamboree t-shirt she takes back from Spencer in season 1 of the show.

"Girl made a lot of jam, Spence. You know how time-consuming that can be? You need a jar funnel, a canner, some fresh fruit. Strawberries, raspberries, maybe a tayberry."

Schmidt 

Well today I really really really wanted this t-shirt, I had a jam making sesh with Ryan as he is really good with foody related things. He will probably blog about it too so check out his fancy WordPress blog which is mostly food related here.

Anyway, after this weekend, I now know aaaaaaaall about making jam. That is partly the reason why this blog post is late. I was supposed to come back to Harrogate at lunchtime to get on with my to-do list but I just got so into the jam making! Yesterday we had a little drive around Pocklington, where Ryan lives, and found lots of Elderberries and Blackberries. I helped pick some but left the messy blackberries for Ryan to do while I whinged about being cold :P does anyone else think it's really cold lately? I wore boots all weekend!

 Last night at 8pm I was sat on the floor in my reindeer onsie raking berries off the stalks with a fork so we decided to leave it until today to get stuck into the actual jam making, However, when Sunday morning came, rather than rushing straight into the jam making, we decided to go out for a lazy Sunday morning breakfast. It was a good idea of mine I think :) tucking into half a full English and a pot of tea would make me ready for any day.

So... making jam! I was in charge of sterilizing Ryan's old jars, always the eco-friendly with his recycling. It's not too tricky, you just pour boiling water into them to kill any germs. Then you cut circles of greaseproof paper for under the lids but I forget why!! 

 Then you have to weigh and wash all the berries before leaving them to boil/simmer for 20-30 minutes. Then you put the sugar in (how much depends on the amount of berries) and leave it for AGES again. Finally you end up with a yummy smelling, gooey mixture that sets when it cools :)

and there you have it...

JAM!

I am very much looking forward to tucking into toast with homemade jam in the morning. What a perfect way to start my second week in school!

Even the smallest person can change the course of the future

Yesterday I had a fantastic day at the YUMI community street festival, despite my ridiculously early start. YUMI is a multicultural initiative with a community garden that Ryan volunteers for, he is a keen gardener so it's totally his kind of thing. You can find out more about the work they do from their website, http://www.yumiyork.org/ 

"YUMI links people with different beliefs, lifestyles and cultural roots: we share our skills and talents, support each other, celebrate our traditions and achievements, and lead public events."

So how do I come into all of this? Ryan asked if I would help out with the festival as there were a few children's activities (my specialty) but I strangely enjoyed getting mucky with the bunching onions before tucking into some delicious food from India, Hungary and Harrogate's Bettys (a little closer to home of course).

The success of the festival was of course down to all the hard work that went into the organisation and the growing of all the produce. My tiny contribution is nothing in comparison to all the people that religiously gave up their time to make sure everything stayed on track. I did visit the allotment a few times and I was definitely the only one who didn't know a pak choi from a tomatillo.

On the day all of the plants got transported by van to Parliament Street in York (where all the best festivals and markets happen) at 6am!! Yes that meant a very very very early start for us. Once we got stuck in and started mulching (I picked up gardening words, go me!) the time soon flew by and before we knew it we had a beautiful little garden in the city centre. The little touches such as painted wooden signs and facts about the plants made it even more interesting and colourful to look at. 

One of my favourite parts was what I have nicknamed the cute produce stand. The ceramic pots, painted wooden labels and mucky bags gave it a real authentic garden feel and I loved reading where the seeds had come from. Hungary, Japan, and Poland are a few that I can remember. I don't know whose idea the wellies were but I think they looked awesome!

As well as the beautiful garden, there were also stalls where chefs from around the world had cooked some native dishes using ingredients that were being grown on the allotment. There were also some children's activities that enhanced their understanding of both the cultures and where the food comes from. I was amazed to see food from so many countries all being sold in one place. I also learnt where some dishes originate from that I didn't know before.

 After perusing all of the yummy goodies that the chefs had to offer, we settled for the Indian Chickpea Curry. It is something I have tried before which defeats the purpose BUT it was delicious! Plus it came with some type of fried bread that I had never heard of. I got a little more adventurous with pudding and sampled a Hungarian poppyseed cake with raspberry sauce before going chocolate testing at the Betty's tent. The lady was lovely and so interesting! I never knew that so many processes went into making chocolate from cocoa beans. Betty's had mixed new flavours of chocolate specially for the festival. I was brave a tried a 'rosemary and olive oil' as well as a 'wasabi' flavoured one rather than playing it safe with ginger caramels. They were weird but strangely yummy too!

Thank you YUMI and Ryan for letting me be part of such a fun and interesting day!! Now I just need plenty of sleep ready to start my first year of teaching on Monday...... and you guys thought I wasn't going to mention it :P hahaha good luck to all you NQTs out there! Just remember that you are fabulous teachers and there is more to life than your work <3

Enthusiasm is excitement with inspiration, motivation, and a pinch of creativity.

I HAVE TIME TO BLOG! :) Who knew I'd be so busy during the luxuriously long summer holidays that I have off?! After two beautiful weeks relaxing by a pool in Spain, I've been playing catch up with all my work and slowly ticking off the to-do list ready for the new term in September. The start of my NQT year is fast approaching now and I'm starting to feel the nerves!

It was finally time to get back into school today (I don't just laze around for the entire six weeks... well... almost) and I spent all day moving tables, laminating, making displays and generally organising my new classroom. Here is what it looked like when I arrived at 8:30 this morning...

It was quite an inspiring classroom when it was left for me but I had to take down everything that was blu-tacked for the massive Summer clean. After a lot of muscle work and hours of laminating and stapling it finally looked a little bit like this...

There were loads of ideas on Pinterest that I wanted to integrate into my first classroom so it was an exciting day having them all come together. You can check out my classroom ideas/inspiration board here and see if you can spot any of them in my classroom. 

I've grouped the children into tables and named them after British olympians and paralympians which ties into our 'Growing Together topic'. We are going to be looking into healthy living and ending the half term with a study of ancient greek olympics. There are lots of creative links that make absolute sense I promise!

I've switched the literacy and numeracy boards and backed them with lovely bright colours so that the classroom is nice and fresh even for the children that spent last year in there. My numeracy board still has some work left to do tomorrow but it has certainly brightened up that corner!

The 'UP' inspired display has been in progress since our moving up morning. I asked the children to write down what they wanted to achieve this year on a balloon so that their aspirations could metaphorically lift the house and we'd be 'growing together'. See what I did there? ;) The bookcase and desk area is sooooo much better and more accessible now too. I want to create a really attractive reading environment/chill out zone so that the children will be more encouraged to use the space. The post box is a nice touch from the old classroom, I will be using it for children to write down any problems or feelings that they might not like to talk about.

Now for the super geeky, keen teacher bit. I have been sooooo picky about the organisation of the classroom. To be honest I think it was made worse by the two weeks cover I did back in July because I had to teach according to someone else's rules until Summer. I literally couldn't wait to replace the visual timetable, figure out a way around the CONSTANT pencil sharpening and move the desk so things didn't fall off the back.

Visual Timetable - I like my timetable to have a simple image and phrase so that it doesn't take up loads of room on the board. These editable square images from twinkl are really lovely and completely free! They have a huge range of resources and I definitely recommend checking them out. I used their mini-beast borders during placement and the children loved them.

Pencil Hospital - I really hope this works, I can't cope with children spending more than five minutes sharpening their pencil to a perfect point. All children will have their own pencil and when it snaps, they can replace it with a pencil from the 'ready to work pot' and leave their pencil in the 'pencil hospital' pot. Then I can have monitors to use the 'pencil doctors' (sharpeners) to fix all the poorly pencils. Genius. Just genius.

Caught you being awesome! - For a bit of positive behaviour reinforcement, I will be giving away raffle tickets to children who are caught doing something awesome in my classroom. It could be for effort, manners, being a good friend or whatever really. They write their name on a ticket and pop it in the treasure chest at the end of the lesson. At the end of the week I will choose two names from the chest and they get a little prize from the box. Children should soon realise that the more times their name is in, the more chance they have. Probability objective ticked? :P

Lollypop sticks - I'm sure all my NQT friends will be using this idea already. Write the names of your class on lollypop sticks. Obviously I had to recruit Ryan to do mine because of my weird wet wood phobia. Theeen you have a lucky dip of names when you want a 'no hands up' class discussion.

Even though I am totally knackered, I am excited to get back into school and finish sorting out the rest of my classroom tomorrow! :) September NQTs... please let me know if you come accross any other ideas. I will be intently following my Pinterest feed in the meantime!

Hungry?

Last Sunday Ryan took me to see the YUMI community garden as he always talks about it and I am helping out with their street festival in York on Saturday 31st August. We were all talking about baking with vegetables, because Ryan had made his first ever beetroot brownies, and I was inspired to do some baking myself!

Apple Cake with Honey Icing 

This recipe is from Innocent Drink's cookbook that's full of really good stuff, Hungry? You can buy yourself a copy here :) I got this recipe back in second year and some of you might remember the beetroot brownies that I had a go at making; as well as egg frittata muffins and lentil curry it seems! Anyway, apple cake...

Ingredients:
250g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Pinch of nutmeg
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
200ml olive oil (I used sunflower oil)
75g caster sugar
seeds from 1 vanilla pod (I used vanilla essence)
zest of 1 lemon
2 free range eggs
2 apples - peeled, cored and chopped

200g icing sugar
4 tablespoons of lemon juice
4 tablespoons of honey

How to:
Preheat your oven to 180 degrees C/ 350 degrees F/Gas Mark 4. You'll need two 23cm cake tins, buttered and the bases lined with grease proof paper. (I made smaller individual cakes with a silicone tray)

Mix the flour, cinnamon, nutmeg and backing powder in a bowl and set aside.

In a second bowl, whisk the oil, sugar, vanilla seeds and lemon zest. Now whisk in one of the eggs, followed by the apples, and mix again.

Start to add the flour bit by bit, whisking as you go, until you have a smooth batter. Leave to stand.

Seperate the second egg and keep the yolk for another time (if you want to). Put the egg white into a bowl and whisk until stiff peaks form (um what? I just did it until it was more foamy than runny). Carefully fold the whisked egg white into the batter. You want to be delicate here, to keep as much air in the mixture as possible.

Pour the mixture into the lined cake tins and bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until an inserted skewer comes out clean. Once golden on top, allow to cool on a rack while you make the  icing.

Sieve the icing sugar into a mixing bowl and add the lemon juice bit by bit, followed by the honey. This is a loose icing that will dribble off the sides of your cake, so don't worry if it seems a little runny.

Once the cake is completely cool, dot a few holes across the top with a metal skewer and spoon the icing all over, allowing it to dribble down the sides of the cake.

Red Thai Pork

I picked up a book called 'Easy everday healthy' by Lesley Waters in TkMaxx last summer (you can buy it here) and to be honest I haven't really used it! So I decided to try out this recipe on Thursday night. Poor Ryan and Tom were my guinea pigs but it actually turned out okay after what felt like HOURS of stir frying on our rubbish induction hob.

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 red onion, peeled and finely chopped (watery eye alert)
225g of pork tenderloin
2 tablespoons Thai red curry paste
500g carton of passata
1 tablespoon of sugar
350g French beans, topped and tailed (I used spinach instead)
Freshly ground black pepper
Coriander or small basil leaves to garnish (naaaah, not that fancy)

How to:
Heat the olive oil in a large shallow pan (ha, good one induction hob), add the chopped red onion and cook over a gentle heat for 10 minutes until soft and golden.

Meanwhile, cut the pork into 5mm (1/4 inch) pieces. Turn up the heat under the pan to high, add the pork and cook, stirring, for 2 minutes until evenly coloured. (Again, induction hob fail... 20 minutes)

Stir in the Thai red curry paste and cook for 1 minutes. Pour in the passata and the sugar and stir well. Bring to the boil, lower the heat and gently simmer for 8 minutes.

Meanwhile, (if you want beans) blanch the French beans in boiling water for 1 minute, then drain and refresh under cold water; drain again and cut into short lengths. Add the beans to the curry and cook for a further 1 minute. (If you want spinach just add it to the curry and let it wilt)

(The fancy-pancy bit)

Season with pepper to taste. Scatter coriander or basil leaves over the curry and serve accompanied by Thair fragrant rice, and yoghurt if you like.