Had to post this!

I am so thrilled over a few pictures I have taken recently. These are from this morning and across the street from where live:

I have been trying different things with my Olympus 550 just to get the hang of how things work and to see if I am ready to jump into a dslr- I AM!!! I like the Olympus for landscape pictures and still pictures, but I to get the look I want when taking pics of my kids, I need to invest in a Nikon D60 kit or D40 kit. I've seen Canon vs Nikon, blah, blah, blah- I want a Nikon!

I find it interesting what a difference it makes adding a frame to a picture. Why didn't somebody tell me???

US President's Notebook

We officially began our New School Year about 8 days ago and picked up where we left off in Weaver, which happen to be Volume 3, Chapter 7- US History and the first 15 Presidents. I thought to make lapbooks, but decided against it and did a Notebook instead with lapbook booklets.
I didn't plan to post pictures until they were completely finished, but someone on the Yahoo Notebook Group asked if anyone had done a notebook on US Presidents, I thought I should go ahead and post a few pictures. Not only that, but I also would like to document the resources we used, so when we go back through the Volumes, I will have something to remind me. When looking at the pictures, please keep in mind, these are NOT finished. I will post pics of the finished product as soon as we finish with this chapter.

My two older children are now in the 8th & 6/7th grades (HUH? where did the time go?!?!?!) Their Notebooks are more detailed than my younger two children in 2nd & Kindergarten (another HUH????) Okay- got that out of my system. The first place I went for coloring pages of the Presidents was:
www.whitehouse.gov/kids/presidentsday/color/
There are two options: #1- you can click on each presidents name and his coloring page will come up OR #2 You can choose to download all the presidents in a PDF. The difference between the two is that if you choose door #1 then the images will come out smaller than if they were downloaded in the PDF format (#2)- We used option #2.
For my older kids, I included a Leader Survey. I have no idea where I got it from! I did download it from off the internet about two years ago and came across it for this chapter. They may have come from here, but been removed: highland.hitcho.com.au/Forms.htm
It wouldn't be hard to make in a Word Document. Let me know if you need help and I'll try my best!
Just in case you can't see them in the pictures below, questions asked on the survey are:

• Name


• Date of Birth
  


• Place of Birth


• Country represented


• Leader during what time period


• Famous for


• Other important work


• Significance of work


• Resources for learning more about this leader

Then for the Presidents with a lot of information, we either made a lapbook or glued booklets to card stock paper.
For the President booklets- I printed most of the material from:
www.homeschoolshare.com/presidents_lapbook.php
and for the Lewis & Clark booklets:
www.homeschoolhelperonline.com/lapbooks/lewis_clark.htm