Digital Photos

Studying plants? Take pictures of leaves for an online tree identification site. Studying the beach? Take pictures of driftwood and sea creatures. Studying horses? Spend a great afternoon taking pictures of horses outdoors.

Not only is a great art project to learn to compose beautiful photos, but it also turns into a writing assignment when you add text and explanations for every picture.

Putting Photos Online

BubbleShare
Free online photo slideshow maker that is easy to link to a blog or website.

Digital Photo Editors

Picasa from Google
This is a free software download from Google that will organize your pictures and let you crop and edit the photos. It is also hooked into Blogger for easy posting to a Blogger blog.

Photoshop Express
Free online photo editor from Adobe.

Free Digital Photos Online

You can't just take a picture off of someone's website and use it in your digital lapbook! It is important to teach your kids from a young age about copyright laws.

Here are a few places you can find photos that you CAN use:

Library of Congress American Memories Collection
This is a wonderful resource of historical photos and prints. Be sure to check the copyrights section for each of the photo collections here. -- UPDATE! Library of Congress now has their Creative Commons licensed photos on Flickr: http://flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/

USDA Agricultural Resource Center
The photos here are of animals, plants, crops, and insects. They are professional quality photos and are free to download and use!

Flickr
Another website that is full of great resources for homeschoolers, but I do NOT suggest turning your kids loose here. Some of the photos are copyrighted and some fall under the Creative Commons license. With the Creative Commons license you can usually use the photos for non-commercial use as long as you give credit to the photographer. On each photo page there is an "Additional Information" section that gives the copyright information.

OpenPhoto.net
Open Photo is another website where you can find photos with the Creative Commons license. Be sure to check each picture for the copyright information. Once again - this is a parent check first site. I haven't seen anything inappropriate on the site, but it is best to be safe on this one.

Pics4Learning
You can let the kids loose on this site! They are all copyright friendly photos that you can use for educational purposes.