HS - Our Presidents

I've recently decided to include some examples of homeschooling lessons that we do for those of you who are interested.  It's also fun to write everything down and I always take pictures!

So of course with President's Day this week, we had the opportunity to have a few lessons on two of our most beloved presidents: George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

I wasn't exactly sure how to teach about Abraham Lincoln since his presidency was all about the Civil War; a subject way too old for a preschooler and a first grader.  Instead of focusing on his presidency, we focused on his character.  We first found a portrait of Abraham and then we read some stories about his childhood that discussed his honesty, integrity and his love of his fellow men.  We also read a story about his hero George Washington.  It was really great to help them learn about who Lincoln was not just what he did, which will be a later lesson.  We also discovered together that he was a man of God.  He read the Bible and prayed every morning while in the White House and I'm sure before and after.  The kids really liked that since that's what we do.  As I read these stories to the kids, their assignment was to draw pictures from the stories we heard and then tell me what they learned.  They did a great job.  Then as we were finishing up they really wanted to sing the happy birthday song to Abraham.  So, in the middle of our lesson we sang Happy Birthday to Abraham Lincoln - which I'm sure hadn't been heard on this earth in a very long time.  Finally, in a way to appeal to Evie's artistic bent, we cut out a beard for each kid.  It was Joe's first time with scissors.  He did such a good job.  Evie and Joe had a great time pretending to be the president.

Our next lesson on George Washington was very similar.  We studied a portrait of George Washington and discussed how we knew him. (The kids love a cartoon series called, "Liberty's Kids", which features George Washington as the commander of the Revolutionary army.  Joe just had discovered that Mr. Washington was on the dollar bill.)  Then again, we read stories about George Washington that described the kind of man he was.  The we colored a picture of George and watched a video from our library called, "The Presidents" done by the History Channel.  We only watched a few minutes as it was a documentary and too old for the kids, but they loved the parts that we saw.  Evie especially loved seeing that Lincoln was also on our money: the penny!!! (their favorite denomination)

The lessons turned out great and considering it was the first introduction of these men to my kids, I loved the questions that they asked and the focus on their character instead of their historical achievements.