Getting Ready for the 4th the Lazy Way.

I wanted to spend a week studying, with the kids, a little about the 4th of July and what the day is all about. Last year we spent the whole month of June studying the Revolutionary war, or at least what started it. This year I decided we should take a week to review a little of what we learned last year and revisit some of the lives of our founding fathers. I admit I took the lazy route and got a bunch of audio books for the kids to listen to.
Jean Fritz books are excellent and my kids enjoyed them. Full of information but often with a little humor to keep the kids interested. Our library has many of them accompanied with an audio CD which was so nice because when I sit down to read to the the kids, before too long I am dozing off mid sentence. So each day we listened to one of these great biography type books and learned a little more about the revolution and some of the men that helped make it happen. I have a few more, John Hancock, George Washington and Patrick Henry, that I had placed on hold but they hadn't come in yet, (maybe someone else is being lazy too and has these ones out right now!) so we are probably going to continue listening to books about the revolution into next week as well when these books come to sit on the hold shelf.


I also found another book (with a CD of course) which was also very interesting, The Journey of the One and Only Declaration of Independence. I think we will relisten to this one again today (the 4th).

But we also learned more about George Washington this week. I actually had to read the biographies I found of Washington. I didn't get to be as lazy and let the CD's do all the reading. But we read a few different biographies of our first president and now Ian at least recognizes his picture when we see it and knows who Washington was. He was very excited that Washington was on the 1 dollar bill and also on the quarter and got very excited when we saw a poster of a painting of George Washington on the walls of the Library when we went this week. So a little is sinking in to my 5 year old.

I wish I could say we did some fun crafts or projects to go along with our reading but like I said this was all done the lazy way. I just can't seem to get motivated to do much more than this lately. Taking naps and lounging around sound so much better to me at the moment.

I hope you all have a great, relaxing, safe, and enjoyable 4th of July.