Who Was Benjamin Franklin?

So along with getting older, and starting real school (1st grade), we have had lots of homework, plenty of tests, tons of extracurricular assignments, presentations, speech competitions, and spelling bees.  

One of the last assignments of the year was the class history project. 

At the beginning of the year, we (parents) selected a presentation date and corresponding historical figure that our child would later be responsible for preparing an oral presentation for the class.

I am smart, so I of course picked a spring date and the slot right after spring break - just in case we needed extra time to prepare :)

Will's historical figure - Benjamin Franklin.

Will did tons of research including reading the Who Was Ben Franklin? biography from the Who Was? series.  He even used a highlighter as he read through the chapters to highlight items, fun facts, and important events he found interesting and wanted to include in his report.

From there, he created a book report which we were given all the directives on, page by page, so it was easy to know what information to provide, but we were also given plenty of liberties on creativity - so we sat down with Will and created the following pages...and I'm proud to say he did all the drawings, coloring, writing, cutting, pasting, etc on his own!

From there...we created his tri-fold poster board!  What fun!

I wish these existed when I was little.  

With his readers on and 100 dollar bill in hand - was set for his presentation!

We rehearsed numerous times, so he knew his material well, knew when to point...

When to change positions...

And more importantly, when to ask his teacher's assistance to "please dim the lights" for the big lightening bolt debut!  (Totally Billy's idea)

It was an amazing presentation.

Will did an awesome job putting in the time and effort to read the books, find the fun facts, write ALL the writing in his report, and draw this...from scratch...no tracing...no help...our little Picasso :) 

The way Will's sketch turned out was my favorite part of the whole thing :)

Needless to say I will be keeping this booklet forever!!!