Kailey A Clark

This was a recipe from one of our themed travel nights and it was delicious!! "Traveling" while social distancing has been very key to keeping us in good spirits. I'm not sure why it has helped as we rarely go out to eat but I'm guessing with the lack of family visits it has helped us feel connected as a family. When we do these special cooking nights it usually brings us all together over Facetime as we talk about what we had and where we "traveled" to. My parents have even started "traveling" around for some of their dinners as well. It is a fun and exciting thing to try when social distancing. It was a beautiful day outside and we got to be out and enjoy the nice weather. Getting outside is a great way to help ease the feeling of isolation during this challenging time. Even if it is just out into your backyard or balcony, fresh air can really help heal that feeling of being trapped. We served this with Greek Rice and tzatziki sauce and a G...

Wow what a week last week was! I feel like we finally have a good schedule and the weather looks like it might warm up again. This will make life a lot easier as we can then try to get outside for "recess" in both the morning and afternoon. On the days when we don't get out we still love to go down to the basement and play on the "rink". My youngest is getting much sturdier on his skates and more comfortable moving around on his own (he even likes to take shots on his brother now!). My oldest has also shown improvements in his confidence and his ability to do a crossover. We love going down to the ice for a skate and to play in the basement when the weather isn't nice enough to get outside. I've even made the boys a scoreboard this weekend for their rink. Now we can choose which teams we want to be and keep track of the score! I also think its a nice piece of art for the basement on a wall that has been black for the 5 years we have lived in the hous...

We made this rice a few weeks back when we had our Greek night. It honestly was so delicious I cannot believe the amount of flavour it had. I was going to make plain rice cooked in chicken broth but decided to spice it up a bit and make the Greek experience a little more exciting. This rice really doesn't need anything else with it but pairing it with chicken souvlaki , Greek salad and tzatziki sauce takes it to the next level of flavour. The boys also really enjoyed the rice with all of the different spices. We have definitely expanded out flavour pallet during social distancing as I have more time to try recipes that we might not have thought of before. Start with cooking the onions in oil in a pan (that has a lid or that you can cover) until they start to get soft. Add in your minced garlic and cook for another minute. Next you're going to add the rice to the pan to cook in the onion and oil mixture. You're going to do this for about a minute to help it get transl...

Last week was another great week of home school. I will not say it was easy because lets face it, balancing work life and teaching your kids isn't an easy task. I can only imagine it becomes more difficult when you aren't a teacher or is it more difficult for me as I am setting unrealistic expectations on my children as I am a teacher? Who knows? I am getting great work from my sons teacher and am finding ways to distract and keep his younger brother busy during his learning time. It is still a difficult balance as they both need almost 1-1 attention during this hour and a bit of learning and I am essentially tied up during this time. I then find ways to keep them busy in the house, playing in the basement often works so that I can get caught up on any work that I might need to before we move on to another activity for them. As the hockey academy teacher at our school I have really missed being on the ice and teaching hockey. We Have the Hockey Shot synthetic ice in our b...

This is a new recipe that we tried the other night. I'm not a huge Trout fan. I find that they tend to have more of a fishy taste than a Crappie or a Walleye. But this recipe is good and takes away that fishy taste (that most people can't even taste). The lake we fish at has nice pink Lake Trout and would have a similar taste to a Salmon. This fish was previously frozen and I can just imagine how much better it would taste coming right off the lake and cooking it up. The boys generally like their fish white and breaded but they both enjoyed this recipe as well. This is a nice easy recipe which I also love. During normal times we are generally a busy family during the week and having quick meal options that also taste great are a huge hit with my husband and I. I have definitely been trying a lot of new recipes to see what we like and what we don't like. We've also been taking on a lot more recipes that take more time but have been making extras to put in the freezer. ...

This week the schedule really worked well. We started our day around 8:30 when my husband would also start his work day in the home office (aka our bedroom). We generally work for about an hour on my oldest sons schooling and then do some songs and snacks with my youngest son after. This all adds up to about an hour and a half. Once all the "work" is done we go downstairs or outside to play and take a break. My oldest son is also getting use to what our day schedule looks like and is excited to start school and now just wants to get all his work done as he knows the rest of the day will be for playing. We have spent a lot of time focusing on sight words and I have noticed a huge difference in his reading as he is starting to recognize words. He still loves math and usually does his math work in bed before he has a bedtime story. His teacher sent out some great math activities to try and we will try to add those during the day. I recently bought him a Kindergarten math activit...

This cookie recipe is so easy and oh so delicious!!! We recently added cookie making about once every second week to our home school schedule. The school I work at and my son goes to, has an event called Fun Food Friday that happens every Friday afternoon. It involves the kids creating a fun healthy snack, crafts and organized games. The grade 5-8 leadership classes take turns planning the events and it is a fun time for everyone! My sons teachers also do cooking Friday mornings. The kids all get an opportunity to help make some kind of snack/treat for the class. He really loves this and misses cooking with his teachers. He was so proud last Wednesday when he go to show my husband how good of a cook he is when he made me breakfast in bed for my birthday (it was delicious!). So I have tried to add in at least 1 cooking day a week where we make something. I usually use this cookie recipe every other week as they tend to go fast!               ...

Ok, so once again I have changed up our schedule. I now have a better idea of when the boys are focused and ready to learn and when they've lost interest and just want to play. I was trying to do learn, play, learn, play alternate throughout the day. However, by the time we got to the afternoon (after my youngest sons nap) there was little to no motivation from anyone! So we have tried a new schedule (I feel like by the time we find what works for us it will be over and time to get back into a school routine lol). I've also made the adjustments to the schedule to try and meet the needs/expectations of what the Ontario Government has come up with for. The MOE has decided the following hours and subjects will be focused on. K-3: 5 hours a week and focusing on math and literacy 4-6: 5 hours a week and focusing on math, literacy, science and social studies 7-8: 10 hours a week and focusing on math, literacy, science and social studies (history/geography) Even though science i...

Lets face it, most of us have been at home now for at least 3 weeks social distancing and we are starting to feel like we are running out of things to do. We are doing the same thing week after week, balancing home life, work life, and your child's school life all under 1 roof. Life could be getting a little stressful and you could feel like you're in a bit of a rut. Here are a few suggestions of things that we have been doing to help make social distancing a little more entertaining for myself and my family. 1. "Travel" - I don't me literally travel, but you can choose different countries and cook different dishes from. We have recently "traveled" to Italy, Mexico and Greece! My family has really enjoyed these themed meals as they are foods that are different than what we would normally have. When I choose where we are going to "travel" to, I look  up different recipes for that country and then choose what I think will go together. I t...