Well.. Geeze! Presidential material in the first grade? Who'd a thunk it?

Since you want to teach this outdoors try to get a good book and all of you share it sharing is teaching something as well and all sit together reading and spelling and sounding out words make it fun for you and them as well and have lots of patients. Good luck!!!! Mabey even give them a treat when they done well stickers or something not candy then you have sugared out kids!!!!

My son and his class made headbands one day to celebrate 100 days of school. They each had to count to one hundred while drawing 100 polka dots, stars, or whatever on the headbands.

That might be a fun math excercise... to draw a certain number of things on the headbands. They were just construction paper with a cutout of the number stapled to it, also in construction paper.

Oh... and by the way he is in first grade!

There is a school near by that I have sort of adopted. All 300 students are black and 98% are on public assistance. Anyway I am a bit of a celebrity over there and help out when I can. Earlier this year I was asked by the first grade teacher to come over and talk about aggragates (rocks). As I stood there taking questions one little girl raised her hand. When I aknowledged her she said "Mr.Danny ma daddy worked for you 'till you fired him" I look at her little name tag and sure enough I had fired her dad for being late to many times. Next question "Mr Danny is you a mean man" Next question "why you fire her daddy" and on and on. My face was beat red and the 2 teachers in the back along with one of my secretaries (taking pics) were laughing their asses off. That is one of the pics you see in my profile. Children, ya gotta love em.

Oh Nicki what a challenge you have on this one. Well, what kind of things do you do when the kids stay overnight? I thought the headband idea that Lilith suggested was a good idea.
Classes outside sounds good also.
Jeez these are first graders -- babies; tough standards.

You will be fine. Learning can be fun.

I know for sure that must have been uncomfortable. Thank you for sharing the story.

I will give you one big for the day

Nicki, we did a game that was kind of like hot potato with spelling and math.
Using a bean bag or eraser and having the kids stand in a circle start some music and have the kids start passing it around... stop the music and whoever has it either has to spell a word from the list or solve a math problem.

Luck to ya Doll! Teachers ROCK!!

You could try addition/subtraction bingo for Math.
One day, make those woven paper placemats and put small numbers into a grid - 4 x 4 or 5 x 5.

Write the addition/subraction problems on the board.

Call out one problem at a time, each child should put a marker (stones, M&M's, cut-out circles, etc) on the answer to each problem.

Winner(s) get a small prize or badge or extra star ... if using edibles - everyone gets a reward.

There are tons of things like this you can do that are both fun and educational. I dont know what subject you are teaching, but alot of things like this game can stretch across subjects - the kids dont even know they are learning - just having fun!
I taught my children at home. We had a big box full of games we had made and every year, we got to use them again as each child progressed.

Just an idea!
Good luck.