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President's Day

In New Orleans people will use any excuse to party. At my house I will use any excuse to craft. President's Day passes without so much as a glance at the calendar for some but I'd been making a long list of ideas for quite a while, scanning the holiday pages of my February Family Fun Magazine half wishing I did have a kid born of February 21st so I could have one of the cute theme parties they feature. Yes, I am THAT dorky.

So I checked out a few books from the library. I really wish I'd done my homework before I went but I didn't so I just had to settle for what I could find in the short time I was able to hold Ryland down in between the aisles before he started screaming. I got one book based on the song This Land is My Land and one based on America the Beautiful. I also got one that I thought was really cute called Grace for President. It was about a young girl who couldn't believe there had been no girl presidents. Her teacher proposed a class election and she decided to run. I loved that it highlighted integrity and hard work and I also loved it's simple explanation of the election process including electoral votes.

I worked on learning some new words with Jathan this week including president and honesty (two words that seem to get further and further apart, huh?). We studied about the lives of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and learned to recognize them on flash cards as well as President Obama. Then we crafted! Want to see pictures? I know you do!

Here's our calendar for the month (made from A beka Book's Art A book). We decided to tuck our presidential flash cards inside the heart so George, Abe, and Barack are hanging out together this month.


We did coin rubbings which not only reinforced recognizing the presidents from our flash cards but also helped in learning the different coins which is one of my goals for Jathan this year.


We also cleaned up some old pennies.


Using ketchup. Am I brave, or what?


Jathan thought it was totally cool.


And they actually came out pretty shiny!


We made a George Washington "wig."


And talked about the legend of Washington's cherry tree incident. We talked honesty while Jathan decorated a arm and handprint cherry tree.


Then we read a book about Abraham Lincoln that I had to completely paraphrase. Anyone know how to tell a three-year old about slavery and assassins? Yeah, me neither. Log cabins? We can handle that!


What I want to know is how Jathan perceived that I left out the part where Lincoln's mother died. "Where's his mom?" he asked.

"She died," I told him, "But he had a stepmother that loved him very much." Then he talked about dying FOREVER because that is one of his favorite subjects right under which animals we eat.

And here's our President's Day wall complete with the silhouette that Keeleigh did of Jathan's head!


Oh, yeah! President's Day was awesome! = P

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