Alex's President Garfield Presentation Using XtraNormal

(NOTE: YOU CAN SEE ALEX'S VIDEO ON MY BLOG. I'm not sure why it doesn't show up on Google Reader.)

Alex's history assignment for this week was to choose one of these presidents between Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt and make an online presentation. She chose to use XtraNormal to create a movie about President Garfield. This is something we'd never used before and Alex enjoyed learning how to use it. It's a neat way to add variety to your learning and a great way to share what you've learned!

Her online history class is now reading book 8 of Joy Hakim's series, A History of Us. This book, subtitled An Age of Extremes, covers the years 1880-1917. One of the chapters we read this week covers the presidents between Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt.

We have really been enjoying Joy Hakim's books. We have already covered books 6 and 7 this semester. In the next few weeks we will finish about half of book 8 and will continue with the book in the fall.

We decided to grab our book, Smart About the Presidents, to read more about the 9 presidents between Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. These pages are brief but have interesting facts and drawings.

We also read about the wives of the 9 presidents in our copy of Smart About the First Ladies.

I also showed her a copy of our new book, America's Presidents: A Museum in a Book. This is a wonderful book that has copies of actual letters, documents, and other papers. Alex really enjoyed this book and flipped through it and read for a long time.