"But the President bosses the other people around," he replied. After his dad finished laughing he said "Yes but, you are a kid wearing a costume of the president. You are not really the president." It amazes me how specific and literal we have to be to get the point across!
I reminded him that when I was Ms Frizzle for Halloween I still had to drive our regular car, make his breakfast and dinner, etc. I think it made sense.
Because there was apparently a bit of trouble on Halloween with him thinking he REALLY WAS a Transformer and that the rules of the class did not apply. But pffft! that was waaaay back in October; he's much more mature now.
And Presidential: As I left (I drove him this morning), I could hear him saying to the other kids who'd arrived, "I know, I know, everyone wants to see my briefcase. Line up, single file, single file." I think I've created a monster, lol!
Also in attendance this morning, just from the kindergartners we saw, were JFK, Betsy Ross, and George Washington. A very political crowd!
DuckyBoy was very excited to see George Washington, telling the boy (a friend of his), "We're the opposite Georges!", opposite in that one was the first president and one is president now. Oh, and he even used the other boy's name -- as in, "We're the opposite Georges, Name!", which I consider a big socialization win!
He was also hopped up and down in delight to see the friend who was dressed as JFK had dressed up -- and not only dressed up but was dressed as another president.
Now, whether or not he eats his Presidential Pop-Tart is up to the teachers. He didn't want it in the "limo."
Did you know the White House website has a kids area? I would never have thought of it. It's aimed at kids a bit older -- I tried the elementary school math challenge and didn't understand it AT ALL!! -- but the Concentration games are cute and revealed some interesting pictures of rooms in the White House.
Last night DuckyBoy loved (as in, obsessed over and wanted to play again and again) the Barney & Beazley Maze, wherein you must use the arrow keys to get one of the President's Scottie dogs through the maze to the other dog. We also scrolled through the Wikipedia info about Dubya, I read him the first 3 sentences and also the fact that he has the distinction of having received the highest and lowest approval ratings of any president! Interesting. Then we scrolled down the rest of the page quickly and looked at the pictures.
The children were supposed to bring in some information about their person. Now, I'm thinking, How are we gonna do that in kindergarten? I'm not printing a bunch of pages he can't read... So my idea was to write a few questions on paper and have him write the answers:
* Who is the President?
* Where does he live?
* What state is he from? (I was delighted he wanted to spell "Texis" himself -- that's been a big struggle at school. He wants to spell everything right and they want him to sound it out at this age.)
* Does he have a family? (We hadn't talked about this, but he knew -- from our 2-second glance at/discussion of one of the Wiki photos!)
* Does he have any pets?
And finally,
* What does he do? (Signs laws.)
And you know what? No problem at all to get him to write those words. He did want to write "NYC" instead of "White House" (after all, it's shorter, and he got to write that at our hotel check-in last week instead of spelling out New York City) but it was a momentary protest. And he also voluntarily cut out one of the Presidential seals we printed to decorate his briefcase. And he helped paint the briefcase.
Amazing what a little involvement in the subject matter can do for his desire to practice these skills. I know his program individualizes much more than regular school would, but it's still a struggle for him to do assignments about things he doesn't care about (sort the shapes, etc. -- Why, he thinks?) I'm glad we took advantage of this chance to help him see, for lack of a less-trite phrase, some real-world application of writing, cutting and so on.
Oh and lest I forget our pun for the day -- his purple bath-toy seal went with him as his other "Presidential seal." Don't blame him -- he gets that from me (much to his father's chagrin).
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