Thank you so much for the activities- although I wish I could print the Who am I game. Thank you for the teacher's manual and the interesting way you have put the info together! Awesome!

An incredible wealth of information and additional resources is available at George Washington, A National Treasure. This site includes background information, primary source material, interactive portraits, time lines, games, reenactments, and lesson ideas for multiple grade levels. This resource is the next best thing to a time machine.

This is an excellent collection of images. The ease of accessibility and the availability of these images on the Smithsonian website brings the learning of history into the modern classroom. The organization and detailed descriptions of each image gives greater depth to the information already stored on the image.

Throughout the museum, American Indians kept mentioning that they were happy to have survived. American Indian culture is one we will never fully be able to recover, but with the foresight of people like Jim Schoppert we are able to enjoy and learn from some of the things that survive. I love this museum as a whole and really encourage people to visit. One video mentions that in creating the museum, they become a history like every other history...respect it...argue with it. That helped me to be aware of the significance of what I was experiencing. Excellent.

Our preschool students loved this resource as most of them have never visited a rainforest before. We had fun learning about the 'Great Kapok Tree' and its cultural significance.

This resource is excellent for teaching women's American history by offering photographs of significant American women. The photographs are powerful and tell much about each of the subjects they reflect. I used this as part of a women's history project with my students. I recommend it highly!

Looking forward to learning more about this.

My daughter thoroughly enjoyed this lesson on Ben Franklin and is waiting for the next storm to move through. lol. But in all honesty, this not only explains his beliefs and ideas but him as a person. It makes children and/or adults realize that he was just a person too. To quote Mr. Franklin "One day Mr. Franklin was asked why he failed 2000 tries to make a light bulb? He told this gentleman that he hadn't failed, he had just learned 2000 ways not to make a light bulb." Ben Franklin is a very important and a highlight of American History and should be discussed more in a classroom setting to give him the character that he deserves.

I am always looking for ways to provide cross curricular activities, and this is one that provides great activities! I love the static electricity one, very simply to do with easy to find materials.

I have always been fascinated by Ben Franklin. This lesson illustrates the depth and breadth of his interests and accomplishments. I liked the lesson with the portraits of Franklin's friends. I would love to have the students draw a portrait of themselves and include objects that emphasize their interests. The lesson about static electricity is very effective, and I found it very effective to set up different stations in the room to show how electricity can be created. This is a lesson which I will continue to incorporate into my thematic unit on Franklin for many years.

This is something I wish my school district would grab and use! The opportunity to go back and re-listen to class material is something I know I could have used in school. It's just another way to get students to use the things that they are familiar with in order to help them learn. Very cool!

Using podcasts in the classroom is an excellent tool. The students get so excited to record their voice and have it posted for all to hear. We use podcasting in our classroom quite a bit and the students love it, they look forward to the next time they can record latest project!!

"Podcasting with your students" is a great resource for teachers new to podcasting. Teachers can see how to implement the use of this technology for field trips and other lessons in their curriculum. The links to video tutorials and tutorials on other websites add the helps teachers would need to ensure success with their students. I love the idea of having students create a podcast based upon their experiences on a field trip. Now everyone at school (and globally) can enjoy the children's experiences of places near their home.

This is truly a fun lesson. It obviously targets younger kids, but it works well for older ones as well.
It can be used by Art teachers, but also by English and World Languages teachers to accompany the description of a story created by students. Students can create a plot, main characters and a colorful setting. It will certainly take more than one lesson, but it will keep them engaged. My students had lots of fun creating their script and then their short "movies." They worked in small groups and each group got to read and watch the projects of the other groups. The little notebooks and their descriptions are still in my classroom and occasionally someone still enjoys looking at them.

I remember doing these when I was a kid, but I just couldn't remember exactly how to do it to show my 1st grader. Wonderful that I happened upon this! Thank you Smithsonian!

This is a great lesson to extend into the tech lab classes. Students from 2nd - 5th can create their animation on a multimedia program, such as power point and print the books to create their own flip book.(ISTE 1, 4, 6)

To integrate within the math curriculum, calculations could include how many slides per moving an object from side to side and how many pages for printing if 6 slides are printed per sheet of paper. (ISTE 1, 2, 3, 6)

To integrate within the language arts curriculum, students can write a procedural essay for the creation of the flip book. Another writing option is a research paper about the history of animation or inventors, both historical and contemporary. (ISTE 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

This can be extended to science technology through the study of Java script for Middle School students.(ISTE 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

This turned out to be a visually stunning book, one which I perused with my students over and over. They were intrigued by all of the intricacies of Buddhist art, and Asian culture. This book taught us so much, and I would recommend it for anybody. It was well written, well categorized and simply fun to look through.

The Freer Gallery of Asian Art is my favorite of all the Smithsonian museums. This Gallery Guide to the Art of Buddhism beautifully presents the works I saw first-hand in the gallery for the students in my classroom! Thank you for having it available online for my students in Las Vegas!

Buddhism is a theme in Asian Art that can be traced across Asia and links both Eastern and Western art. This resource is excellent in that it provides just enough information for a general audience member to understand how Buddhism spread and how the imagery changed. Only suggestion is to add one more link to Buddhism in Korea and Southeast Asia and possibly Buddhism today.

Every school should include the arts and music into scheduled lessons that make connections to social studies, math. technology, history,science, and language arts. This lesson is a great way to start those connections. I teach music from this platform and many times the students are unaware of the breadth and depth that every subject is interwoven. I see many opportunities in this lesson about "The Art of Piet Mondrian" to get students to make those connections.

I am big fan of Mondrian, and to come across such a lesson plan to use was a joy. I have not used the lesson plan yet but I am going to use it once I start my student teaching. My main goal was to find a plan that incorporated other subject areas such as this plan did. The activity of getting the students to not only do a Mondrian-style painting but as well to lay out a grid system on a computer program to make an artwork, in my eyes, is a wonderful step forward in integrating technology into art making. I personally went through this plan and tried it out myself and absolutely loved it. Not only do you get a feel for the original way in which Mondrian created his style on canvas, but you get to experience how you can create such works through computer graphic programs.

I love that this lesson includes different subjects such as history, math, art, music, and language arts. I love that the definitions are included too. I would make a chart with the definitions and have students come up and try to guess the meaning with the help of other students (maybe even use pictures or drawing to help them guess the meaning before I uncover what the real meaning is). A lot of the students in my class love to draw so this is a great way to introduce art work that students might not know to help expand their horizons.

This nifty website presents novel, expansive material on a more obscure historical topic. Expansive in breadth, but not so detailed that the student's eyes gloss over. However, more than enough detail and activities to form a solid basis for further research.
I withhold one star because the website turned out to be a tad confusing to navigate solo.
I often tutor students in the 3rd grade to high school range in creative writing and critical reading. One of my biggest challenges has always been simply sparking these kids' desire to read, think, imagine and write! This website is another tool that has been carefully bookmarked.

This website makes it so easy to find images that can enrich study of any topic.

I teach special education and my students have high interest in visual and hands-on art, but don't always have the reading skills to learn about the artists.

Its easy to use with great images. I learned a lot!

Nice thought of including Mexican history...

This is a wonderful source that I will definitely use in my classroom. I am a first-year Spanish teacher and am always looking for ways to incorporate culture and history into my classroom. The highlights of this resource include very thorough explanations accompanied by clear, vivid visuals. My only suggestions are to keep the information up to date. Although the exhibit may no longer be in display, the Public Programs and Film & Video sections should still be current.

This resource is great. It helps to teach children about art and different colors. Art is a great way to express your emotions. Children need an outlet like this.

This book absolutely opens a child's world to the many colors of the world, they are able to see the world around them in a completely different light, projects with this book are very engaging. I love it!

Mixing paint and making color. What a wonderful hands on learning experience. Math, science, and art. plus the delight of making a mess. Bring this activity outside and we can really cover some very young educational bases.

There is not a lot of information out there about Indian artwork. This is a very complete resource, and can be useful for most ages, including adults! There is a lot of details, including the meanings of the different signs. The learning activities are also very useful!

Cross curriculum: Art and ESL. Art is a wonderful subject for English Language Learners because students are more likely to take a chance using English when discussing a work of Art. They feel free to talk about the visual images and relate them to the subject. The paintings are very beautiful and a good source of information for ELLs. They don't need difficult text to acquire the information and relative cultural points. It is a user friendly resource for the primary document. (paintings). High Rating

This resource was very helpful in teaching about photography, history and art. There were many examples and photographs. The directions were clear and it was easy to develop a lesson from this. I used this as a jump start for looking at old family photos. What do we see, what do the details in a picture tell us, what else can we learn from a photo. Excellent.

This lesson is a great way of getting students to compare the pictures they take today to the examples from the past. By putting the students in behind the camera just before each picture was taken, students can transport themselves in time making history more engaging.

This course interested me because I am the newspaper and yearbook adviser and journalism teacher at my school. It is a great way to introduce photography to my students and to help them understand digital photography and its place in history. I will also recommend this course to our art teacher who teaches photography as an art as opposed to the photojournalism that I teach.

The resource from the Freer Gallery of Art about the ancient art in Egypt is what I will use for my integrated math, reading and Social Studies classes next year. The project started out with a drawing activity that we have done in the past in math. It is a good link to show the students how it was used in Ancient Egypt. The project then go on to tell a story why it was done this way which goes along with what we teach about the ancient Egyptian culture. Many student choose an artistic component for the culminating project for the unit. It will be a good example for what the students may want to work with on their own.

I have used this site since the exhibit in 2006 in my World History classes. The reason I like is so well is that it is comprehensive and student friendly. It gets students thinking about the origins of the word "bible" as well as how these 'little books' extended technology of the time period.

This has a wide range of ways for students to use the Freer and Sackler Galleries to enrich their studies of Chinese art. This allows a teacher to pick and chose in what areas students should focus their attention.

I have always been a fan of outdoor sculptures. Be they abstract or realistic, they are here for as long as the medium will allow. This resource is loaded with many useful pictures and data for both educators and public reference. I am going to use it to plot a vacation where I can see as many public sculptures as possible in as varied a medium as possible during my remaining summer vacation. An excellent resource!

This was an excellent introduction to the history of photography. The combination of historical information and classroom activities was just right. I teach photography and have used the activities in this resource to get my students thinking like photographers!!

All of us think in images. (Try this trick, tell students to close their eyes; say "banana." Now ask if anyone thought b-a-n-a-n-a. No, they all thought of a yellow fruit.) Posters to Go allows the social studies teacher to bring art into the classroom and use it to teach "how to read a painting" for historical value. The Catlin painting is especially critical since it was Catlin's art work which not only documented the disappearing West, but formed for the U.S. public the lasting image of what a Native America looked like.