Super Tuesday

This is a great year to be teaching U.S. government! Leah's research paper topic is the U.S. Presidential election and we have been watching (we have a TV and an antenna so that gets us PBS, FOX, and ABC, and we always have the laptop for CNN, et. al.) as many of the debates as possible. We also got a 13 week free trial of the local paper. Leah cuts out political cartoons and articles every morning. Her cut off date is March 1st... after March 1st she will stop collecting artifacts and start writing her paper. The topic is who she thinks will win in November based on all that has happened so far.

Delegate Tracker has a really nice graph, or just Google "Super Tuesday."

The girls have been on the edges of their seats and I've been fascinated as well... I've never seen a presidential race like this one! And never before had a TV to watch any of the debates. I wonder if we are going to all have a front-row seat at the birth of a third major political party. And then part of me wonders why the other existing political parties besides Big Blue and Big Red aren't getting more followers... if there is this much unrest and voter frustration within the traditional system.

It's great because Natalie is researching presidents, too, in her family tree.

2016 Debate Schedule

2016 Caucuses & Primaries Schedule

Current Events was always too tricky before, in my opinion, but the girls are now deemed old enough to listen to NPR at lunchtime and they love to dash across the room and turn that radio on!

Fun Facts
Why Not?

I always wonder about some of the cartoony-style books that are out there (Excuse my quick instinctive sidebar into Waldorf Guilt & Anthroposophical Angst! Do I even need to spend all this time defending myself? Could I stop it, even if I wanted to?) but if the girls are going to absorb them intently when I check them out from the library, I'm OK with that. I think that maybe the style of the illustrations matters the most in Early Childhood... once you get to Middle School, I think engagement is key. If Leah is going to nearly knock me over in the morning trying to be the first to show me today's political cartoon, and it gets her thinking, well... that's fantastic.