Picture Perfect Presidents!

Of the people, by the people, for the people!
This week, Gan Aleph began learning all about our past presidents! We began with Abraham Lincoln, since his birthday is coming up this Saturday. We learned that Lincoln was the 16th president and was one of the greatest presidents of all time. To honor his presidency we engaged in many "Lincoln-related" activities...
After learning that Lincoln's face is on the penny, the children took part in a "Lincoln Penny Toss." They used their probability skills and predicted which side of the penny would win the race...heads or tails. They took turns tossing the penny and filling in their chart accordingly. When one side reached the top, they evaluated their results and looked at how many times each side was landed on.

We learned that Abraham Lincoln was 6 feet 4 inches tall! What exactly does that mean? We used a tape measure and our bathroom door to visualize how tall that actually was. We saw that when Lincoln wore his stove pipe hat, he was even taller than the door! The children wrote their names on index cards and measured their own heights against Lincoln's. Even the Morahs took a turn to see how much taller he was than them!

Last, we looked at some of the clothing our past presidents wore. We discussed how some presidents wore long jackets, white tights and white wigs! The children are using cut outs of their faces to create caricature-type images of themselves as president. They are carefully cutting out all of the clothing they would wear and using stuffing as white wigs! After learning about the role of a president, they each wrote what they would want to do if they were the president, and are attaching their ideas to their presidential portraits!