Happy 4th of July! (MASSIVE LINKS HERE)

On this day in 1776, the Declaration of Independence was approved by the Continental Congress, starting the 13 colonies on the road to becoming their own country, independent from England. If you are an American citizen or you live in the United States, you are very lucky because we are a great country that loves freedom very much. In this country, you can dream any dream of what you want to be and you can work toward making that dream come true.

I have collected a lot of great stuff for you to look at, learn from, enjoy, play with and just have fun and it all has to do with the 4th of July and/or our great country. Pick a place that you would like to visit from the menu list below. That webpage should open up in a new window.

SECURITY NOTE FOR BOTH KIDS AND ADULTS: Almost ALL websites use some kind of advertising or they ask for donations. You will probably see that at many of the links I provide here. That's not necessarily something bad but I think it's fair to tell you it will be there. KIDS, you must NEVER give your email address or any other personal information about yourself to any website without telling your parents FIRST that's what you want to do. That's also true if a website says you can download something to your computer (yes, even if it's for free). NEVER DOWNLOAD ANYTHING TO YOUR COMPUTER without telling your parents first that's what you want to do.

Did You Know...

Did you know the average life expectancy of your one-dollar bill is just 18 months or that you can fold a dollar bill 8,000 times before it will tear?

Did you know the dollar bill isn't actually paper? US bills are 75% cotton and 25% linen.

Did you know that 38 million bills are printed each day by the Bureaus of Engraving and Printing? That's all denominations of our paper money for a grand total of $541 million dollars.

Did you know it takes a stack of 490 bills to weigh just one pound? Did you know a dollar bill is .0043" thick?

Did you know the word "dollar," which appears on both sides of the bill, is a variation of the German word Taler, the name of a silver piece that was 1st coined in 1518?

Did you know the first paper currency issued by the U.S. Department of the Treasury were Demand Notes Series 1861?

Did you know if you had 10 billion $1 notes and spent one every second of every day, it would require 317 years for you to go broke?

Did you know Martha Washington is the only woman whose portrait has appeared on a U.S. currency note? It appeared on the face of the $1 Silver Certificate of 1886 and 1891, and the back of the $1 Silver Certificate of 1896.

Did you know the very first one-dollar bill had a picture of Salmon Chase on it? Chase was the sixth Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and Secretary of the Treasury under President Abraham Lincoln. The one-dollar bill featuring President George Washington was released in 1869.

Did you know nearly one-half of all bills printed in the United States are one-dollar bills?

Did you know that the eagle seal on the back of the dollar bill is actually taken from a centuries old seal of the 6-Nations of the Iroquois? (Except the 6-Nations seal didn't have the E Pluribus Unum banner, and it was holding 6 arrows in its talon instead of the current 13).

Did you know there are 293 ways to make change for a US dollar?

Ben's Guide to U.S. Government for Kids

From kindergarten through high school students, this portal (gateway) website puts you in touch with every govenment agency that's built a special website for young people. The webpages are categorized by specific age groups. Psst... this is a fun hangout for grown-ups, too, even if it was designed with kids in mind.

In the future, I will probably be featuring some of the government websites mentioned here in this big list of all lists.

FROM THE WEBSITE:

Ben's Guide to U.S. Government for Kids is brought to the World Wide Web as a
service of the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO). Ben's Guide serves as the educational component of GPO Access, GPO's service to provide the official online version of legislative and regulatory information.

This site provides learning tools for K-12 students, parents, and teachers. These resources will teach how our government works, the use of the primary source materials of GPO Access, and how one can use GPO Access to carry out their civic responsibilities. And, just as GPO Access provides locator services to U.S. Government sites, Ben's Guide provides a similar service to U.S. Government Web sites developed for kids.

VISIT THIS WEBSITE

ALSO SEE KIDS.GOV (seems to be another official portal to the United States government for kids).