Origin of the Thanksgiving Day Holiday

Did you know that the author of "Mary Had a Little Lamb" was behind the US making Thanksgiving a national holiday, that Lincoln was the president who initiated this, that there is no proof that turkey was actually eaten on the first Thanksgiving. So many nice tidbits in this video and more of the story here.

Test Questions for US History
These are four stemmed questions. I sometimes have my students print out the responses to online questions so I know they did it or even just the answers. If you use the online textbook (earlier in this blog), the kids really can never say they left their book at school!

Eli Whitney and the Cotton Gin
So I wanted to be able to show my students how slavery spread, especially after the invention of the cotton gin. The map above is what I found. You can change the dates and watch the increase of the slave population even after legal importation of them had stopped. Speaking of Whitney, here is a nice flash image of how the cotton gin works.

Wiki Notes for "American Pageant"
These outline notes go along with the AP book mentioned above, but could be used for other courses. Please leave messages telling me if you like these as we use a different book here at my school.

Electoral College History
Yes everyone is fixated with the 2008 election and if you want a great site on the current count go here. However if you want something historical such as the 1800, 1824, 1876, 1888 and 2000 counts click here for the page above or on the individual links for the controversial past elections.

More Free Maps
If you want decade and other US maps to download and use in the classroom, go here. The rest of the site charges for Power Points and other items, but not for the maps. By the way, this site came from one of the readers of the blog who posted a comment. If you see something that you want on this site, post a comment or e-mail me at kenhalla@hotmail.com.

Excellent US History Notes
Chapter by chapter, here are extensive notes for US History

Need a US Map?
Here is every map you ever wanted for classroom use all ready to be printed out and copied for your students or uploaded onto your website. It includes ones showing region, physical, capitals and more.

Top 100 US Documents
Apparently there was a people's poll (guess I missed it!), but the list is pretty good and it is put together by the National Archives. It includes pretty much everything you'd want such as the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Louisiana Purchase Treaty, as well as the Marshall Plan, Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, Jefferson's secret message to Congress asking for funds for the Lewis and Clark Exhibition. Not only are all 100 documents in easy to read form, but the original is also shown (kind of nice to show the actual Gettysburg Address to your students). Most of the documents also have links that you can link to to get background, pictures, etc.

Pat Oliphant's Cartoons
This is a great collection of Oliphant's Cartoons which are the Library of Congress website. With the election upon us, this page is particularly relevant. But you can see all his cartoons here.

National History Education Clearinghouse

This website has lesson plans, online history lectures, ask a historian, website reviews, summer institute suggestions, research written by experts and much more. By more, you can do a search and get some other excellent websites. So since we are working on Jefferson, I did a search and found this page which includes the above pictured document which are Jefferson's handwritten thoughts on the national bank. There is also one entry describing h0w Washington rejected TJ's drawing for the Capitol and that only one professional architect entered the contest to desgin the building (and naturally he won!).