Constitution Day

I had to wake up the girls at 8:30 to get them dressed, fed and some school work finished before we headed to Girl Scouts.

Today is Constitution Day so I wanted to make sure we had time to learn about it between all the other activities we had to do.

So the kids watched a video from the Constitution Center about the Article II, the Presidency while they ate breakfast.  Andrew really paid attention - he knew who James Madison was and what the Constitution is and why we need to protect it.

After breakfast we rushed out the door to get to Girl Scouts where the girls worked on more Constitution Day stuff and some badge work.

Then we drove up north for Cairn's beginning of the year assessments.  Her teacher was fantastic.  She picked up early on that Cairn has some testing anxiety and helped her out by pointing to problems.  That simple gesture helped Cairn focus on one problem and not feel overwhelmed at the whole page.  If Cairn didn't immediately know the answer she moved on so Cairn didn't start feeling nervous about what she didn't know.  She scored the best she has ever scored.  I think it really demonstrated what Cairn actually knows and what she doesn't.  The problems she missed showed me her holes.  I loved it!!  In the end she scored low on her math facts (which I already knew because Cairn gets anxious whenever you time her on something so we don't work on that skill specifically.)  I have noticed that Cairn is getting more and more facts memorized so I am comfortable with her scoring low.  She scored very high on the concept assessments which I also knew - she knows and understands the concepts - it is the math fact portion that slows her down.  I was very proud of her.

Then she took the reading portion and she scored WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY above where she needed to be for her grade level.  She scored a 174 - at the beginning of 3rd grade she is supposed to score a 34, at the end of 3rd grade a 64 at the end of 4th grade a 90 - so she has no issues here.  Her retells were great and included lots of details so she scored high here too.  She walked out very proud of herself.

After the assessment we drove home to work on some more schoolwork before dinner and heading out to our special Constitution Day celebration with the local historical society.  They had billed it as lots of ceremony, songs and dedications to soldiers.  It ended up being almost 2 hours of different people talking about programs for vets - memorials, wounded warriors and something else.  The kids did a great job even though it wasn't what we really wanted.  I totally support programs for vets but not when it is billed differently.  The kids did get to meet a veteran who had been awarded the purple heart.  My kids were the only ones in attendance (where were you Liese?) so several of the soldiers got a big kick out of talking to them afterwards.  Andrew ended up going up to several men and asking them where they got certain parts of their uniforms.  Some of them used kind of big words for him but he loved looking at their uniforms.

We did get to see some new flags for some of the past wars.  We saw the new Vietnam War flag

The 17 stars are for the 17 different campaigns.  The wreath on the right is for South Vietnam, the one of the right is for the French and the stripes in the middle are .....

This one is called the ruptured duck flag.  The middle portion used to be a badge you would get when you were honorably discharged.  You would wear it on your uniform so you wouldn't get arrested within the 30 days after discharge before you had civilian clothes.  President Roosevelt changed the eagle in the middle from being one standing to one that was supposed to look like it was in flight.  I don't think the artist knew what an eagle in flight looked like because he isn't it.

At the end of the day, we had learned
1) the Constitution was signed by 39 men on September 17th, 1787 after spending the summer in Philadelphia writing it.
2) James Madison was the father of the Constitution.
3) James Madison lived in Montpelier in Orange County, Virginia

Next year we will learn even more.


10 Things you probably didn't know about the Constitution

The U.S. Constitution has 4,400 words. It is the oldest and shortest written constitution of any major government in the world."

"Of the spelling errors in the Constitution, 'Pensylvania' above the signers' names is probably the most glaring."

"Although the United States Treasury Department stopped distributing currency denominations of $500, $1,000, $5,000 and $10,000 in 1969, for all intents and purposes the production of each stopped after World War II. However, these notes are still legal tender and may be found on rare occasions in circulation. James Madison, the "Father of the Constitution" is on the $5,000 bill."

"Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts was opposed to the office of vice president. 'The close intimacy that must subsist between the President and Vice President makes it absolutely improper.' However, he put his feelings aside and became vice president under James Madison!"

"The oldest person to sign the Constitution was Benjamin Franklin (81). The youngest was Jonathan Dayton of New Jersey (26)."

"A proclamation by President George Washington and a congressional resolution established the first national Thanksgiving Day on Nov. 26, 1789. The reason for the holiday was to give 'thanks' for the new Constitution."

"In November of 1788, the Congress of the Confederation adjourned and left the United States without a central government until April 1789. That is when the first Congress under the new Constitution convened with its first quorum."

"Although Benjamin Franklin's mind remained active, his body was deteriorating. He was in constant pain because of gout and having a stone in his bladder and he could barely walk. He would enter the convention hall in a sedan chair carried by four prisoners from the Walnut Street jail in Philadelphia."

"The word 'democracy' does not appear once in the Constitution."

"As evidence of its continued flexibility, the Constitution has only been changed 17 times since 1791!"