Hello Mr. President!

Monday was President's Day so we took a field trip to the Chicago Historical Museum. They also had a portable exhibit about Abraham Lincoln, it gave a little taste of what the Lincoln Library and Musuem in Springfield is like. That ended up being the kids favorite part of the trip. After the portable exhitbit we headed into the historical musuem. And met Abraham Lincoln. We loved that he looked as tall as the real Lincoln (who was 6'4" tall). We later saw him with Mary Todd Lincoln in a bit called Meet the Lincolns it was a great way to teach the kids about what was going on and about the Lincolns themselves. After meeting Abraham Lincoln, we headed to the kid area, where they had face painting and a craft for the kids to do. The face painter was an actual artist and it was fun to see the kids get their faces done. (Should you live in the Chicago area and want the contact info on the person click the comment section and it will have her information).



After the wonderful face painting, the kids went over to do an ink painting of Abraham Lincoln and Barak Obama's faces. It was something great to take home and we now have them hanging in our window in honor of President's Day.
Then we headed to an area called Chicago. The kids got to dress up like a Chicago hot dog, famous for all its toppings, ride an old fashioned bicycle, pretend they were running the marathon and because Chicago is known for its smells got to test their nostrils and guess the smells of the town. Unfortunately, we missed the Grey Lake Navy Band, but got to enjoy the Faces of Mount Rushmore.
Hearing about the four presidents on the famous Mountain was great to hear. They were all so different. We got pictures with all of them, except Thomas Jefferson. There were a bunch of people having debates with him, too many to wait to get a picture with. Sorry Thomas, maybe next time. After touring the diaromas and rest of the musuem we decided to check out Moody Church. It was closed, unfortunately, but the kids got to see it. We will have to go back another time to check it out. We had an hour before dad got off work so we headed back our car and worked on some workbooks they had been handing out at the musuem. It was called Lincoln and me. They read different things about Lincoln and then wrote or drew pictures of where they lived, how tall they were, etc. and compared them to Lincoln. We did that in the car, and I was thankful to my oldest for thinking of bringing pencils "just in case". It came in handy. We were able to "waste" enough time to then be able to drive and pick dad up. The neat thing was because it was a holiday the traffic was low, so the kids were able to jump out and go up and see dad's office. They loved doing that and dad enjoyed showing them off. It was a great day and it was neat to see the kids get excited about our presidents and our government.