The Presidents – Review and Giveaway!

I have always been fascinated with learning about the Presidents. As we have traveled around the country, we have decided to visit all of the Presidential Libraries before we die. There are thirteen libraries run by the National Archives and so far we have been to eight of them. We have also been to Wilson and Lincoln’s libraries which are not run by the National Archives.

As I learn more about the president’s personal lives and beliefs besides the usual things you learn from the history books, they become more real to me. I see a side of them that I’ve never seen before. It also makes me more aware of the growth of our country as different leaders helped shape the government to what it is today.

One great way to learn more about the presidents has been watching the DVD set - The Presidents: The Lives and Legacies of the 43 Leaders of the United States. which is on sale at the History Channel site for $19.99. This included 3 DVDs covering different presidents.

A&E Home Entertainment sent me the documentary to review and I was delighted! I highly recommend this set of DVDs for teaching US History. First of all the sound and video quality was excellent. My husband usually had trouble watching DVDs because there is a lot of background noise/music that drowns out the narrators but this was not the case. There wasn’t a lot of distracting background noise so it was easy to focus on the speakers. Not only was the sound clear but the material was really interesting. A lot of the information was shared in an interesting way and not long, drawn out and boring. I also like the way they threw in interesting tidbits of information that we don’t usually hear about when learning history. The information on each President was short enough to be interesting but long enough to be informative. I like the way I was able to put historical events in a timeline according to what President was in office.

I really believe this would be a great way to introduce history lessons. You could plan a whole year of lessons just using this DVD set. Each week could begin with a different President and the events that occurred during his term. What a great way for students to do some project based learning!

If you don’t want to watch them on DVD, you can download episodes right off of iTunes. This link goes directly to The Presidents in iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewTVSeason?id=272208661&s=143441WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewTVSeason?id=272208661&s=143441

Thanks to A&E Home Entertainment for giving me another set of these DVDs to give away to one of my blog readers! In order to be entered into the drawing to win this, all you have to do donate a dollar or more using the donate button on the side bar. Donations will help defray the mailing costs. I will randomly pick a winner from the donors. The deadline will be April 14 at midnight Eastern Time and the winner will be announced on April 15^th. Please pass the word around to anyone you think might be interested in winning this 3 DVD set on The Presidents.

Posted on the Successful Teaching Blog by loonyhiker (successfulteaching at gmail dot com).