When your five year old teaches you new things!

I think that is one of the best things in the world!

Abby goes to what I consider to be a fantastic preschool. After one year there, she knew all of her letter sounds, was able to read with some help, could sight read a handful of words, write legibly, tell simple time, the list goes on and on. Since her birthday is in October, she is spending another year there because she was too young to start Kindergarten. This second year has just really reinforced everything, and she is really Kindergarten ready. She can now read simple books with little or no assistance, and is just a very well rounded student. I am constantly amazed by her.

They do spend a lot of time just learning about topics related to different events throughout the year. Naturally this month her class has been learning about Abraham Lincoln. They have learned a few fun songs, and learned about things he did. She comes home and shares these with us, and most of them are familiar. He helped to free the slaves (and yes, we leave it at that simple idea), he carried important documents in his tall hat, he was very tall himself, just random facts about the man.

This weekend she asked us, "Do you know how Abraham Lincoln's mother died?" I responded with an honest "No." Abby proceeded to tell us, "She died from a snake. It didn't bite her, but a cow ate it and she died." Now, I am very happy to learn new things from my five year old, but this had me a little bit confused. So, a quick Google search (thank goodness for Google, I don't know how parents a generation ago clarified things like this without Google!!), revealed that Abraham Lincoln's mother died of Milk Sickness. She contracted milk sickness from drinking milk from a cow that had eaten white snakeroot, passing the toxins on to humans in the milk.

We went back over this with Abby, who stated, "Oh yeah, that's what happened. Yep!" I honestly had never learned this before, and it was pretty interesting to me I love learning things from my five year old :)