It's Saturday morning and my kids are begging me for something.
No, it's not another hour of cartoons (we get like one channel on the TV, barely).
It's not to go out to IHOP for a family breakfast (even thought that sounds great).
It's not even for jobs that they can get paid to do though I know that will be coming later in the day. (I'll soon be posting about why I think its important to pay kids for jobs that aren't routine chores.
They are begging me to read to them about James K. Polk, our nations 11th president.
You see this year, being an election year, my wife and I decided that we should try to teach our kids (6 and 10) about the former presidents of the United States. We originally intended just to use these flascards (which are great by the way) - but soon decided that we needed a bit more information or they would just run together (like they do for me).
A while back at Performance Education (that's one of the places I work), we decided to develop a new series of books for helping make historical figures more memorable by talking about their childhood and other things that influenced the decisions they later made. Our first stab at this was - U.S. Presidents, From Washington to Lincoln. Even though the material was developed for 6-12th grade classrooms, I decided to give it a shot with my two, a Kindergartner and 5th grader.
Needless to say, they love the stories and they open up great opportunities to discuss the history of our great nation, both the good and the bad. An added bonus, not that its a goal of ours, but they have both decided they want to memorize all the presidents, in order. It's amazing how history can become fun when it is relevant.
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