My daughter's History book merely provided an overview of the presidents, but did not go into great detail about each president. Only one interesting fact was given for each president. My daughter was interested to learn more and I wanted to foster her love of learning. I needed to provide an organized way for her to learn more about the presidents. She was already reading a few books that my Grandfather have given to her, but I wanted her to have a way to capture what she was learning so that she could review the information that she had learned again and again.
I decided to follow the same format that we had used when we learned about the fifty states. If you would like to read the article about the fifty states, then you can click here: The 50 States: A Homeschool History Project. In that lesson, we used a notebook to record facts about each of the fifty states. We are going to use the same format to record facts about each of the fourty-three presidents.
You will need a notebook that has at least 44 pages in it (a new president is about to be crowned). On the front of this notebook place a title that reads, "Our Presidents". We do this so that we can distinguish the notebook from other projects that are doing at the same time.
Label each page with a president. It makes sense to learn about the presidents in the order of their term. Begin with George Washington and end with George W. Bush. Leave a blank page for either Obama or McCain, our next president in November, 2008.
Complete one to two pages per week, in other words, complete the study of one or two presidents per week. It will take the rest of the school year to complete, but it will not conflict with every-day school work. If your child wants to work on the data collection over the weekend, then that is fine. Make sure that the child records important information on the page about each president. Facts to include are important dates (when they were born, took office, died, etc.), interesting facts (Abraham Lincoln gave the Gettysburg address while he was suffering from small pox), wife's name, how many children that they had (if any), changes that they contributed to in the White House, and what they are best known for.
Children should be encouraged to add any details they find fascinating. This is not a required project for the school year, so it should not have the same level of expectation as school work does. It should be fun, and after all, students will learn when they are having fun.
