Sunday, February 6, 2011

A Sense of Humor (and the post where I may offend John Adams)

Well...I wrote this on Friday, but it never got published...

*we are a back from whirlwind trip to attend my Grandpa's funeral. Things went well, and now we are trying to get back into the swing of things. I think it will be a lazy day here. I am also holding out hope that the temps will indeed skyrocket and that the driveway will "shovel" itself*


I am having Deacon memorize the Presidents for school this spring. He also is expected to remember at least one thing that happened during each ones presidency, or something interesting about them. We are up to #10, and have been reviewing.



George Washington was easy, and he does pretty well with the two James. He latched onto Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren right away, and the fact that William Henry Harrison died a month after taking office was especially fascinating to him.



But that John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams are sticklers.

I have no idea what the hang up is- I mean they are no George Washington or Abe Lincoln, but they are also not exactly no-names like Chester Arthur or Benjamin Harrison.

None-the-less, he has trouble with them.

We were reviewing John Adams and he was supposed to draw a picture of something about J.A.

He drew the above.

When he finished he came to tell me about it.

"I drew one of those squirrel things".

"do you mean a scroll?"

"Yeah, I thought it looked like the Declaration of Independence."

"Did John Adams write the D of I?"

look of horror on his face

"No, he didn't! Now what am I supposed to do?"

he studied his picture for a moment and then smiled

"We could say he invented the skateboard!"

And then he laughed uproariously about his document that looked like a skateboard.

I am glad he can laugh at himself.

We settled on writing "Helped" above the picture because he did help,

and besides being "The Father of the Navy"- I couldn't really find anything else about him that

appealed to Deacon.

After all, he is no George Washington.

6 comments:

Jackie said...

Given that at the end of his life John Adams was somewhat bitter about the fact that many of his contributions to the Revolution had been forgotten, he probably would not be bothered by Deacon's mistakenly believing he wrote the Declaration. :-)

Granpa Chris said...

John Adams successfully defended the British troops involved in the Boston Massacre. I think that's an interesting tidbit of American history.

The Three 22nds said...

Jackie, Interesting...I bet Jonathan has a lot of interesting factoids as well. I did read today that Adams and Jefferson had hated each other but became friends at the end of their lives. Deacon liked that story. He also liked that they died on the same day. Death. Duels. Bitterness. Wars. Those are the kind of factoids that Deacon likes.

Gpa Chris,
maybe they can have story time with Grandpa and learn all about the Boston Massacre? I am sure that would be a tale that they would be interested in!

Grandma Debbie said...

I found it interesting that Adams and Jefferson died not only on the same day, but that it was on the fourth of July. And not only on the anniversary of the signing of the declaration, but on the 50th anniversary.

Johanna said...

hee hee! I love the skateboard! :) that's hilarious! I will probably always remember J.A. now...for something he never really did. :)

Johanna said...

oh, also, I meant to say that I always thought it was fascinating that that president only was in office for one month...it's just interesting, you know? and he died from a cold or something, right? bizarre.