Bridger Jones, meet Euclid of Alexandria

I've been learning the Elements of Euclid and Bridger has been enjoying it with me. I didn't think he would really grasp it, but he will actually beg to study it.

Well, after reading through a few propositions I decided that I needed to invest in a compass and actually try one. Today was my first attempt and of course Bridger wanted to do it, too. I let him have the compass and when I came back he had done Proposition 1! (Which is create an equilateral triangle from a given line) My seven year old is learning Euclid! He couldn't have made his mother happier. ;)

I love this excerpt about Abraham Lincoln and Euclid from ABRAHAM LINCOLN by G. Frederick Owen ~

"He ( Lincoln) read in the fields of politics, literature, philosophy, and science. But most of all he ‘read law’. In the course of that law-reading, he says: ‘ I constantly came upon the word demonstrate. I thought at first that I understood its meaning, but soon became satisfied that I did not. I said to myself, ‘What do I mean when I demonstrate more than when I reason or prove?’. I consulted Webster’s Dictionary. That told of ‘certain proof’, ‘proof beyond the possibility of doubt’ ; but I could form no idea what of sort of proof that was. I thought that a great many things were proved beyond a possibility of doubt, without recourse to any such extraordinary process of reasoning as I understood ‘demonstration’ to be. I consulted all the dictionaries and books of reference I could find, but with no better results. You might as well have defined ‘blue’ to a blind man. At last I said, ‘Lincoln, you can never make a lawyer if you do not understand what ‘demonstrate’ means ; and I left my situation in Springfield, went home to my father’s house, and stayed there until I could give any proposition in the six books of Euclid at sight. I then found out what ‘demonstrate’ means, and went back to my law studies.’