Science & Civics

So David is studying Seasons in Science. The concepts for the kindergarten curriculum:

• The four seasons, and order in which they fall. The major characteristics of each.
• New vocabulary: Deciduous, hibernation, migration

I was impressed.

Oh, and if anyone wants to make David's day (week/month), he is deeply enamored of the Math Shark. It quizzes you on math problems, at varying levels of difficulty, and with time limitations. It also functions as a calculator. I would call it Satan's Little Helper, personally, but that's because math...well...isn't my thing. It's at the teacher supply store, and every time we go David plants himself on the floor with the sample Math Shark for a nice long numbers session. ::shiver::

And for today's Civics lesson we met the Governor and shook his hand.

See, we've been working...rather accidentally...on Civics for awhile. I was going to drag the kids up to the state Capitol in order to lobby for a particular bill that I'm interested in, but that fell through. But we did have a conversation about laws and the basic structure of our government. I couldn't think of a way to make fiscal or public policy interesting to a kindergartner, but I had the luck of having read about a "hot topic" in Sauce Magazine. About dogs.

Sauce is a foodie magazine, and there's currently a bit of a debate in the downtown area as to whether or not patrons of various restaurants and cafes should be allowed to bring their dogs out on the patios to sit with them. Some restaurants have actually been busted by the Health Department for allowing dogs into the facility, which is what brought this all up. Now THAT is interesting to a five-year-old! "Should people be allowed to bring their dogs to restaurants to eat outside with them?" Of course he says, "Sure!" Ah, but there's opposition...some people don't think so. And if you make a law, it will affect everyone, so how would you solve it? The city is considering allowing the sales of licenses to restaurants that want to offer the Doggie Dining; nobody's decided anything yet. So here was a topic he could relate to, and it meshed very well with the Civics concept.

Today the Governor happened to be signing a new bill over at one of the high schools, and one of the grassroots political groups I belong to was urging anyone from the area to go to the signing and tell the Governor "thanks" for signing a different bill that we really wanted. (They say this kind of stuff really sticks. Go figure.) So I packed up the kids and we went.

It was a small signing. There were marketing-type handlers at the door to get everyone greeted and pointed towards the library. Once inside, there were some suits milling around, but none of them paid much attention to me...after all, who's going to pay much attention to a 30-something housewife with a couple of little kids in tow? One of the suits, however, stared hard at me and offered a somewhat cold "Hello." He had an eerie look to him, and I took an instant dislike to him. He had the same kind of eyes as Dan Quayle. Yes, really, Dan Quayle. I met him once, up close in my reporting life, and let me say that there may have been lots of jokes about him being stupid and such, but that man just emanated bad stuff. He was slightly frightening. And so was this guy...VERY similar gut-reaction to him.

We sat behind the rows of chairs at a table (in case we had to leave, so we wouldn't disturb anyone else. You never know what will happen with kids in tow), and I saw one other person there that I knew. After awhile I saw our State Representative (who is not scary), but that was it as far as people I knew. I took David up to the table they had all set up, and pointed to the two flags flanking it. "What's that flag over there for?" "The United States Flag," he answered. "And do you recognize this one here?" I sort of held it out a little so he could see the state seal. He shook his head. "This is the state flag. Remember the two bears?" "Oh YEAH!" I explained who the Governor was ("kind of the like the President of the State") and that he was signing a bill into law. This was pretty interesting, he thought. After a bit a little girl appeared and came over to talk to Lauren. David was thrilled and interjected himself in the middle of the whole thing. The little girl was about seven years old and she was quite happy to have found another kid to hang out with. I turned my back towards them and pretended not to notice them. After a bit she says, "...yeah, because my mom's a State Representative." Ah. David was quite surprised and then said, "Well, not MY mom. Sometimes she goes downstairs and does the newsletter. And when she does work, we get to play Club Penguin!"

Eventually the room really started to fill up with Suits and my companion expressed surprise that the Governor wasn't there yet. HA! You'll notice the media didn't show up until the last minute? Typical. Government wanks are always late.

Soon enough people started standing and applauding, which meant the obvious: Elvis Was In The Building. Many handshakes. Much smiling. Much schmoozing. I had the kids stand in front of the table, prepared to shake the Governor's hand if he came by. "Why?" asks David. "To be polite," I answered.

Eerie Man started off the commentaries. Turns out he's Superintendent of schools!! That was really disquieting! Nobody else set off alarms in my gut, however. (Whew!) We had a short spiel by the bill's sponsor (or one of them, anyway), and then the Gov spoke. We had a spiel by the Senator and a State Rep while the Gov sat and signed the bills. "See, he's signing the bill," I whispered to David. "He's writing his name on it, and that's what officially makes it a law. Until that exact moment, it really isn't a new law. The Governor makes it so by putting his name on it; it's his approval." (Yeah, I know. There are other ways it can become law. Still.) They also passed around a copy of the bill with the signature scrawled across the top. David was less impressed by that, but I found it interesting. We all applauded, and everyone attempted to mob the Governor. Sigh. That's ok, we had time to burn. I got a handshake from the Senator, and he made a big deal about getting us up to see the Governor. I shook his hand, I told him thank you, I introduced David and David got a handshake, too. We hung out for a short while longer, and the Rep's daughter wasn't eager to see us leave.

Finally we left, and David said that he'd gotten a personal invitation from the daughter to come up to the Capitol for a tour and "to see the really neat museum" once the legislature is back in session. Her other big lure was that perhaps they could watch Veggie Tales on the TV at the Capitol, too. (I also learned that her family doesn't allow any of the kids to watch or read Harry Potter on ethical principles. They also own chickens (who lay green eggs) and honeybees.)

That really wasn't too bad of a civics lesson, I think.