Teaching Happy Place

I'm getting my groove back from taking back my classroom full time and it is quite perfect timing too!  I am officially in my Teaching Happy Place! What is that? Oh I am sure you have one of those too!  I LOVE everything in my plans for next week...

I would be lying if I told you that I came up with all these great things myself.  I have had the help of some fantastic bloggers. Let me tell you how. 

Math-  I purchased Cara's *The Great Coin Collection* on the Leap Day sale. This unit is FANTASTIC.  There are so many great games that my kids love.  I am currently working on some money games myself to upload soon.  My kids have done so well with the basics that I am going to challenge them this week with some harder money concepts!

Writing- Last year my teaching partner found Amanda's great idea for a *Poetry Coffeehouse*. WOW! Did our kids and parents love this idea?!  We are currently getting ready for our coffeehouse on the 26th right now!

Reading- My kiddos are doing so well during guided reading, but I know what they are in for in 2nd grade! I am going to spend some time discussing purpose and main idea whole class!

Skills- Have you all seen *Abby's Pirate Mark unit*? I am sure you have. It gets the kids so into the -ar words.

Theme- Now- this one I can take full credit for :) I created this Learning Log to go along with a Desert Study.      Here are some documents for download below!

This next document is a paper that I leave out for my students to record new information that they gather when reading independently.

This last document has desert animal names on it. I cut it apart and taped an animal to each child's back. They then went around the room collecting clues from their classmates about the animal that they couldn't see. This game was a hit last year, and I anticipate it also being a hit with my *very* verbal class this year! 

Wow! That is a big post for a Saturday morning! Off to try and be productive for an hour before the Kentucky basketball game comes on! GO CATS!