This weekend, how can the kids and I spend our time better than playing:

• Political Machine 2008 (try explaining “special interest groups” to a seven-year-old)
• Liberty’s Kids (1776, from the perspective of Ben Franklin’s printing apprentice, among others)
• Sid Meier’s Civil War Collection
  (sort of a stretch, I know, but the fate of the union was at stake)
• The Oregon Trail, 5th Edition (You have died of dysentery)

We don’t own a copy, but we always try to rent the musical 1776.