YW Mutual: French Macarons

I was so happy to share a new skill that I have recently gained to my Young Women in my Ward.  Over the last 2 years I have become addicted to a delightful, yet expensive, little treat: French Macarons.  It all started when Jason and I traveled to NYC and had some at the famous Ladurée macaron shop.  I couldn't stop buying them, but depending on where you buy them, they can range from $1 to $6 per cookie!  Well, I'm always up for a challenge, and so I began to do some research on how to make homemade French macarons.
Since then I am amazed with how popular they have become, and how many guides there online. Don't believe, just search for it on Pinterest!  I only had a couple of sources I could find and had to do a lot of experimenting to get good at making these bad boys, but I finally got it down to where I could consistently make delicious looking macarons.
It was fun to invite the Young Women to my place and let them learn the tips and tricks to making the macarons.  I let the girls pick the colors of the cookies and the frosting.  They had the neat idea to make the cookies different colors.  I hadn't done that yet, so it was fun to see them be creative, which I fully support in everyone!  I wasn't so sure of the color palette they went with, but honestly it didn't look too bad.  Blue, purple, and orange... how bad can it be?  To me it screams '80s, but neon colors are back in, right?  I wanted to teach the girls just the simple vanilla recipe, and then from there gave them suggestions on what to do next.  I do have to mention that my favorite add-ins are Nutella and lavender (never together, yuck!).  
We had a great time making the macarons, and since there is so much down time letting them air dry and then bake that we played games and just goofed off.
Overall, I would say it was a very successful mutual night!

The Claw: the Language Grabber!

Here is another simple activity that can be used in a large group, small group, or even one-on-one that isn't hard to prep and for some reason, the kids love.  The only material you will need that can be an investment is a plastic arm-extension grabber.  The kids version of what they use to pick up trash on the freeway.  I've seen them range from $5-$10 depending on the store, but honestly I bought mine at the 99 cent only store.  I got it in case I needed a really great prize for a student, but then came up with this idea.
You can start out the lesson with different vocabulary options, such as: machines that help us, cleaning up the community, or prepositions (open/close).  I decided to do a pragmatic lesson and talk about hands, and pretended that the grabber claw was my hand.  I then would give the students scenarios on what would be appropriate for me to do with my hand (claw).  I asked if I should keep my hand (claw) to myself or be touching my neighbor.  Then we talked about good places to put our hands (pockets, lap, on our desk, folded, etc) and bad places (in our friends desk, on our friend, in our mouth, etc).  That took only about 5 minutes then it was on to letting the students actually use the claw.
I photocopied some pictures to elicit N+V sentences and then crumpled them up like the picture below.  At this point you just need to call on a student and then have them pick up a piece of paper.  To work on teamwork within the classroom, I would have one student pick it up with the claw and then have to pick another classmate to give it to.  That classmate would open up the paper and then tell the group what he/she sees.  I made a big deal about how "I can't see what you have" so it would encourage the students to be specific and give details in what they saw.
This particular lesson was with a moderate-severe classroom with 2nd and 3rd graders that needed to work on past tense sentences.  So they would open up the paper and would say something like "running."  From there, I would encourage the student to tell me more, like "who is running" etc.  Once a full sentence was produced, we would practice it as a class.  From there, I would tell the students to replace the word "is" with the word "was" to make it happen in the past.  Then they would give me examples of "was" sentences (i.e. "I was sleeping").
You really could do anything you want with this lesson as long as you had the correct picture to get what you want out of the students.  You could have them work on prepositions, pronouns, adjectives, articles, really anything.  It just takes a little creativity to modify this.

The crumpled pictures just teasing the children to be picked up.  

My 99 cent claw that provided multiple activities for my students.  

It was quite easy for my students to use the claw to pick up the paper.  The only student that couldn't do it has dysarthria and couldn't keep the paper 

One of the pictures that I used to elicit language.  

Age of interest (in years): 3-12 years

Level of motivation (with 10 being the highest): 6-7 

Level to maintain attention of a group (how long until they get bored): 15-20 mins

I would say that if I could go back this week and redo this lesson, I would have had an interactive break after about 15 minutes to not cause the kids to get bored.  The ones that didn't have a turn yet were still engaged with the activity, but the ones that did have a turn knew they wouldn't get picked again and weren't participating as enthusiastically.  

Even with a couple of the students losing attention after a while, it was still a surprisingly effective lesson that encouraged a lot of language, multiple repetitions, and everyone had a good time.  

As always, I ended with a high give and stamp on their hands.  

Good luck!

--- Speech Teacher Lisa :)

New Beginnings 2016!

For those that are not familiar with my calling at our local ward in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, I pretty much have the best calling in the world!  In each ward we are asked to volunteer our time and efforts to help everyone grow and gain a love and testimony of our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ.  I was asked over 5 years ago to help encourage the Young Women (ages 12-18) to set their standards high and become more Christ-like during those trying years.  I was eventually called to become the Young Women's president, but in my opinion just getting to be around the girls is significantly important, no matter the calling.  I love working with the Young Women and seeing them be extraordinary girls with self-worth and compassion compared to the media telling girls to be conceited and selfish.  At the beginning of every year we meet with the Young Women and their parents to discuss upcoming events and reflect on the past year's events.  This is called "New Beginnings."  This year I had the idea to really focus on the scripture that was designated as the Youth theme in the church: “Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life” (2 Nephi 31:20).
I broke up the scripture and then each member of the YW presidency spoke about what it meant to them.  As we did this, we each turned on a lamp that had the piece of the scripture in it.
This was a simple craft that could be done with vinyl, but I was in a rush and printed out the words on clear plastic projector paper.  You know the kind that we grew up with in school where the teachers would write on them with a projector for math problems?  (Man, kids these days don't even know what we went through with those projectors.  Now they have smart boards that are AWESOME!  But that's a different topic that is not spiritual, like this evening was).

A picture of the lamps and the lines from the scripture shining through!  

I remember having to speak about "Steadfastness" and "Enduring to the End."  With steadfastness, I spoke about runners and how they are constantly trying to increase their speed and strength towards a goal, and how we should be like that towards Christ.  We should be constantly moving towards becoming like Him by doing those things that we need to do every day.  I liked talking about "Enduring to the End" and how some look at it as a positive thing and others as a negative thing.  But if we do what we are supposed to be doing, and have faith in all things, then the "enduring" is quite wonderful.  Then I shared one of my favorite quotes that I try to remember every day: "In all of living, have much joy and laughter.  Life is to ENJOYED, not just ENDURED" by President Hinkley.    
We finished the evening with delicious treats that my amazing hubby helps set up every year.  Thank goodness we have lots of opportunities to use the chocolate fountain.  I love getting to speak to the families in our ward, because being away from our family, our ward is our adopted family.

Graduation!!

I am so pleased to write this post about my favorite person and his graduation weekend.  My darling sweetheart, Jason Michael, graduated from Whittier Law School on May 17th, 2014.  He spent three years of his life dedicating it to all of the gruesome testing and studying that accompanies law school, but has succeed and risen above so many.  Over the years he has talked about classmates that didn't pass certain classes, or that had to re-do a year, and I couldn't help but be so grateful that I have a husband that made the 3 years as painless as possible.  I wanted to celebrate Jason's graduation for a whole month, but we sufficed with celebrating it the weekend of the joyous event.  

Jason was so honored when we got the news that all of Jason's immediate family, including his brother, sister, and mother, would be coming down to help celebrate his graduation.  Jason and I would continuously joke that California had better watch out, because the Burrows' were coming to town and they know how to play.  Boy did we play that day before Jason graduated! His family came down the Friday before his graduation, and we proceeded to take them on the grand tour of SoCal, including Newport Beach and Downtown Disneyland.  

Here are some pics from the beach portion of the tour.

Sunset at the beach!  With a photo bomb from Jacob in the background.  :)

Great picture of all of the original Burrows siblings at the beach!  Total legendary picture!  

We were exhausted from all of the fun on Friday, but woke up jumping up and down with excitement on Saturday for his graduation day.  I kept reminding myself that it was actually happening, because I swore that it was too good to be true and that I was just dreaming.
We woke up to find my parents and nephew, Matt, at our apartment down for the special occasion.  

My sweetie before he walked.  It was a sunny day!    

Jason looking smokin' hot in his doctorate robes and cap. 

One of the most poignant moments that I remember from the ceremony was the guest speaker beginning her address by immediately having a round of applause for the friends and family members of those graduating.  My first instinct was to focus on the graduates, but when I heard the claps I knew that Jason was clapping for his family that was sitting by me and that he had gone through law school with us cheering him on.  I knew that was a bad way to start off his day by crying my eyes out of appreciating and beaming with pride for my wonderful husband.

After he walked he came out looking all official as a true law school grad.  Look at that smile!  

Smiling because we are in love... and extremely relieved to be done with law school.  

Yup, after getting that degree this boy deserved a big ol' kiss!  

Jason with the Burrows' gang!

Jason with the Barnum gang!  

Once things calmed down we were able to meet up with everyone, including Jason's Uncle Dee and Aunt LeAnna, at one of our favorite restaurants, Lucille's.  There we made it a personal goal for everyone at that very large table to consume every piece of BBQ drenched, battered and deep-fried goodness that was served to us.  While we were waiting for our food to come, Jason was spoiled with several gifts, including hilarious t-shirts, thoughtful cards, and other gestures.

I didn't catch all of his gifts, but this one made him laugh as it was a TMNT key chain.  

Our server at Lucille's was great and after talking with Jason for a bit slipped him a birthday dessert.   

Here is a picture of Matt and Jason at our apartment.  When we got home on Friday we found that we had a sneaky boy that went around and decorated the place with graduation signs and banners all over.  What a sweet boy to think of that!

Another thing that I love about Jason (there are several) is that when it comes to serving in our church Jason never hesitates.  We ended up having to share the day of his graduation with a bakesale for the Young Women in our Ward.  Jason was not only willing to spend his evening there, but he was a huge helper for these Young Women to be able to raise the money to go to Girl's Camp.
The YW spoke to me before the bakesale and said that they wanted to thank Jason someway.  I told them that he will have plenty of people thanking him, so they helped plan a prank on him.  Thank goodness he is so good at taking a joke, because only a few short hours after he walked across the stage to receive his diploma, he was walking on the church's stage only to be sabotaged by the YW with silly string.

Bwhahahaha!

Look at all of the pretty colors :)

A couple of days before everyone came down for graduation, Jason and I were looking for some quick dinner and decided that pancakes sounded tasty, so we stopped at IHOP.  While we were looking through the menu, Jason got this dejavu look on his face.  He then told me that in these last 3 years of our lives, we had made a complete circle.  Without even realizing it, we had ended up at the very same IHOP that 3 years ago we had decided that we were going to move to California so that Jason could attend law school.  We couldn't believe the coincidence... or that the appeal for pancakes hasn't reduced in our appetites. We actually had not been back to the very IHOP since that day, so we had a very nostalgic moment without even planning it.

Jason holding up "3" for 3 years since we were there.  

Looking back at this time in Jason's life, I am only full of gratitude that I was lucky enough to be around Jason and see him gain this huge accomplishment.  He had so many amazing opportunities in law school, including visiting China, Korea, NYC and being a law clerk for 2 years at a Bankruptcy court.  Jason has truly found his passion in life and I am so proud for all of his efforts and dedication that he has shown it!  I love you, Jason!  

Favorite Picture Friday: April 19th, 2013

Here are just some random pictures from our lives.  We don't have much time in between school, work, and church but we find time to have some fun.

Disneyland with the blossoms.  

Eating a delicious Indian dinner.  

Walking along Corona del Mar beach.