Presidents' Day--Hail to the Chief . . .

Our Presidents

     So, the rule is:  no discussions about politics in polite company, especially in an election year.  In Kitah Gimmel, however, we've had plenty of conversations about the President and the White House.  One question was:  who is the President?  Sam told us that Ari S. had just received a present.  But we didn't say present, we said president. We then defined the word, "President" as the leader of the United States.  The next question was:  what is the United States of America?  That's the place we live in . . .whether we visit New York, Florida or Tennessee or California, we are living in the United States of America.  

 

      Our President is Barack Obama.  That was hard for us to pronounce, so we practiced once or twice.  A few of us thought Donald Trump was President.  A few of the boys insisted Barack Obama was in the movie Star Wars.  We learned that President Barack Obama lives in the White House.  The White House has a theater, a bowling alley and a swimming pool!  The President helps make the rules for our country.  The Morah showed us a book with pictures of former Presidents.  Noa exclaimed, "Oh, are they all boys?"

     What would we do if we were President?  Hannah said she would get a dog.  Reed said he would go swimming in his grandparents' pool.  Ruthie said she would go swimming, too, because she loves to swim.  Shaya said he would hug people.  Mortimer said he would help friends, because friends need help. Ari E. said she would blow the Shofar.

     We knew that Presidents' Day was coming up.  During Morning Arrival Time, we put our Lincoln Logs on the floor for exploration.  Later in the week, we used a cloth as a place-mat for the logs, to give our structures a defining spot on the rug.  The Morahs thought only Abe Lincoln was born in a log cabin.  We were surprised to learn that actually eight presidents were born in log cabins!  The children did want to know about Barack Obama's birthplace, was he born in a log cabin?  "Mr. Obama was born in Hawaii, but not in a log cabin," we told them.  (Above, Sam and Mortimer experiment with fitting the Lincoln Logs together.  Below, Rami and Ari add a roof to their log cabin.)

 

      We went to our Tzedaka can to investigate our pennies.  "What pictures are on the penny?" we asked.  The responses:  a piano!  a man!  That "piano", we told Kitah Gimmel, is actually the Capitol, a building in Washington, D.C.  That man?  He's Abraham Lincoln! He was our 16th President.  (Above, Shlomit counts some of our pennies.)

     Some of the pennies were tarnished, some were shiny. How can we clean the pennies, we asked. One child said, "Let's use water!"  Another said, "Let's try soap and water."  We put water in one dish, soap and water in another.  We filled one dish with vinegar and salt.  Noa smelled the vinegar and said, "It smells like vinaigrette!"  We placed our pennies in the dishes and waited.

     We discovered that the plain water didn't change the pennies.  The soap and water cleaned some of the pennies.  The vinegar and salt cleaned all the pennies.  The next day we tried the same experiment with vinegar and baking soda.  Yes, that mixture shined up the pennies, too.  It also produced a lot of fizz and foam!

(Above: Shlomit, Ari and Noa put their pennies in the three different mixtures; Izzy uses a pipette to put drops of vinegar in baking soda.  Below:  Leiba and Pearl experiment with the pipette, vinegar and baking soda. We left pennies in this mixture overnight.)

      Later in the week, we prepared Washington hats.  George Washington wore a similar hat when he was general.  We learned he was the first president of the United States.  During his lifetime, he owned 36 dogs!

 (Above:  Shaya and friends prepare their hats. Below, several of the Kitah Gimmel yeledim and their Washington hats.)

 (More Washington hats with Sam and Mortimer, Ari and Levi.)

(Above:  We put one of our hats on Washington's head!) 

Above:  We get together with the traditional portrait of George Washington, wearing our hats.

     We learned that Abe Lincoln was 6 feet, 4 inches tall.  That seemed to impress the Morahs, but exactly what does that mean to a Kitah Gimmel boy or girl?  We measured that height on our wall, then added the stovepipe hat.  Now that is tall!  The top of Abe's hat almost touches our ceiling, and we have high ceilings!  Henia wanted to know if Lincoln was Jewish . . .he does look Rabbincal!

     We shared a book that told us that Abe Lincoln liked to keep his important papers in his hat.  We made our own hats.  Ours were only 2-dimensional, we couldn't put any papers in them, but we've got the idea.  Next week, we'll take our Lincoln mural down, place it on the floor, and then we will use our sneakers to measure.  How many sneakers will we need?  Stay tuned . . .

Morah Susan and Morah Yael