Of Presidential Things

My favorite president is Abraham Lincoln. I remember learning about him in kindergarten around this time of year because of President's Day. We learned mostly about Lincoln and Washington from what I can remember. Since then I've loved reading books about President Lincoln and I have a copper bust that I've always had on my desk or bookshelf. Right now the bust is Amelia's bookend and Caley likes to look at it because it's right at her eye level. She knows who Abraham Lincoln is too. Last week in church preschool I taught about Abraham in the Bible, and Caley got him confused with Abraham the president. 

On Friday we had a busy day planned so we didn't do school as usual. Instead we just read books and Caley wanted to read this one about President Lincoln. This beautiful book, "Abe's Honest Words: The Life of Abraham Lincoln" blends Lincoln's own writing with a biography of his life, set to beautiful paintings of scenes of the time. There are paintings of Lincoln as a boy, slave workers in a cotton field, war-torn America, and a half-finished Capitol building as it was when Lincoln was inaugurated as president. Caley was surprisingly interested in the book and I was happy to teach her. I pulled out her United States map placemat and folded it in half (East and West) to show her that when Lincoln was president, there were less states than there are now. She is very interested in "where do we live" on the map so I told her that when Lincoln was president, there were less people in our country and out in Washington there were lots of trees. Then when the book started to explain the Civil war, I again folded the map in half (North and South) to show her that the country was divided because people didn't agree. Surprisingly, she seemed to understand a lot of what I was saying, but I did simplify things. Obviously, there's much more she can learn and understand as she gets older, but it was really fun to have a mini-history lesson, totally unplanned by me.

Since yesterday was President's Day, Caley watched this video I found on the blog MommyLife. She laughed at the silly morphing of the president's faces, and she recognized Lincoln!