(by the way, it's my new goal to use post titles to entertain Jeff Callaghan because it makes him happy and he lives in LA so deserves to be happy about something)
Having thoroughly enjoyed learning states (capitals and nicknames too) and countries of the world, Tommy's newest interest has been learning the Presidents of the United States. We got a new iPad app called Presidents vs Aliens and it rocks. There are various question types that extend far beyond his (or my) current knowledge so we've set it to just show him pictures of the presidents and he has to identify who it is. After a few weeks of play, he can do this and has a pretty good grasp of their order as well. This drives me nuts when I remember memorizing them for AP US History junior year and not remembering most of them to this day. Considering the family interest in Social Studies on both sides, it's great that he's chosen it as his first area of expertise as well.
This new interest has sprouted some good one-liners (both astonishing and humorous) that deserve recording for this substitute baby book.
The other day Tommy had Sports Day at school and we were assembling the most sports-rageous outfit we could assemble. It included his foam Brian Wilson beard shown here from August:
Tommy put this beard on the other day and proclaimed, "I look like Chester A. Arthur!"
When he first started playing the game, he let me know that John Adams is the dad of John Quincy Adams just like George H.W. Bush is the dad of George W. Bush"
This interest has coincided with his, I guess, discovery of death and his beginning to ask questions about what it means to die. I guess when you throw a bunch of 4-5 year old boys in a school together they're going to start playing killing games. Good times. So while studying the Presidents he likes to look at when they were born and when they died. It's a very strange hearing this little boy talk about dying but he seems pretty cool about the whole thing. Thus far, my base explanation (which I had to give because on Grandparents Day he discovered that not everybody was as lucky as he was...) was that when one dies, one's body doesn't work anymore and we don't get to have them with us on Earth anymore. Thankfully, there were few follow up questions! Though now I think he believes that dying involves going to the Moon or sometimes Mars.... no harm there I think.
Back to the Presidents...
Papa gave him a bookmark and Nana bought him a book (with clip art CD!) so he seems to always have a study guide with him. We've counted how many James and Williams have been President (and learned that Jimmy and Bill count too). He is blissfully unaware of politics or parties and has favorites from both sides of the aisle. He likes the bookends of Washington and Obama and claims they're his favorites right now. He did ask me why there were no women presidents, which I thought was very observant.
Which brings us to Monday. Tommy had the day of school and Grandma and Tommy had a special day together planned. Grandma thought of several great activity filled plans all of which were soiled by the rain and the holiday - leaving everything "closed" and/or too wet. Back to Grandma's house they went where she devised an awesome activity for him. She laid out Papa's giant map of the U.S. and printed out individual portraits of each President. Using her President flip book, Tommy would look up where the president was born and stick his photo onto the map. If he couldn't find the answer in the book, Grandma looked it up online. I love that she took something he was interested it and put a new spin on it for him, also teaching and modeling great skills for him.
When picking Tommy up from school last week, his friend Adam ran up saying "Tommy's Mommy, Tommy's Mommy... Tommy knows everything!" The kid said it was because Tommy's parents were teachers and we were clearly feeding him all the answers at home! Of course, another kid in his class then told me she couldn't share food with her Mommy because her Mommy's was doing a "cleanse." So you hear all sorts of funny things during preschool pickup!
All this is to say, the boy continues to delight and amaze us. I'm off to my first Kindergarten tour tomorrow morning as we prepare for the next big step!
