Egg Bakes

My class serves the Lenten meal on Wednesday. In an effor to keep it simple, we're keeping the menu roughly the same as last year: egg bakes, fruit, breakfast breads, corn (leftover from a PTL meal). And chicken noodle soup if you don't like egg bakes. 

As per usual, my class stayed after school today to do the baking. Man, we had a blast. It was loud and crazy, but everyone had something to do. They all chipped in and were willing helpers. Many of them were proud to be trusted with chopping vegetables, measuring ingredients, browning hamburger, and cracking eggs. It was awesome. It took about fifteen minutes to get started. We finished mixing things up in about a half an hour. Then with clean-up, we wrapped up about 3:50pm. I had told parents to pick them up around 4pm. 

We had a bunch of leftover peppers, onions, mushrooms, cheese, and hashbrowns. I had the sudden lightbulb we should mix them all together into a hash as a snack. Not an original idea, I'm afraid. I've been reading a book called Teach Like Finland: 33 Simple Strategies for Joyful Classrooms and one of the stories the author tells is an observation he made of a home ec classroom in Finland. The teacher reserves time at the end for the students to enjoy the fruits of their labors; they work hard together and then relax together. So, that scene popped into my head as we discovered all our extra ingredients.

One of the 6th graders volunteered to cook it. One 5th grader volunteered to cook the mushrooms separately since not everyone likes mushrooms. Later he said, "I don't like mushrooms, but I think I'll actually try these." He said they tasted mushroomy. We also left the butter and cheese out until the very end so our dairy-free classmate could have some. 

Another student prepped plates and forks. Finally, time to eat! My kids gushed over it. "We had all these random ingredients left, and we threw them all together, and they tasted great!" We all sat together at one of the tables in the church fellowship hall and enjoyed our afternoon accomplishments. Sigh. It's moments like these that make all the tough days worth it.