The ABCs of ABE

Tonia Kirby

Summer Fellowship 2008

Early American Museum

Day 2: Lincoln’s Friends and Family

Activities:

Word Search

Young Abe Lincoln - read Young Abe Lincoln by Cheryl Harnes - each building in Champaign and Ford Counties should have this book and suggested activities available in their libraries due to a grant from ROE #9.

How Many Lincoln’s Long? - Abraham grew to be 6'4". Find someone in your school or a parent that is about that tall and let the children trace him or her and make a cutout of Lincoln. Decorate it to make it look accurate. Then use your Lincoln to measure how many Lincoln's long is the hallway, the classroom, the school, the playground, the street, etc. If you cannot find a person then measure 6'4" on a piece of paper, or cut several of them so that many children can participate and lay them end to end. Or take a piece of bulletin board paper and laminate it - cut into one inch wide strips that are 6'4" long and let each child take one home to measure things at home!

In the Headlines - using the website www.thelincolnlogs.com look up daily headlines and “print” a daily – TODAY IN HISTORY – and distribute to the other classrooms in your building. You could have parchment paper to stain paper with tea bags. It would be great for the children to look these up themselves but if that is not possible you can go there in advance and print the dates you want to focus on and have the children decide which ones they want to report on. These could be hung on a bulletin board – read over the intercom with the daily announcements or copied and distributed to other classrooms!

Family

Followings

Hope Chest

Writing Prompt

Nicknames

Optional: Listen to the Brian Fox Ellis Story about Mary getting a two-story house!

Word Wall Vocabulary

Vocabulary: Stepmother, Wrestler, Lenient, Humble, Nickname

Stepmother: the woman your dad marries after he and your mom divorce or if your mom died.

Wrestler: Today when we think of wrestling, we think of this big hulking people on WWE or the high school and college kids trying to eat just enough to stay in their weight class. Well Abe was known as a wrestler because he was often teased about being so tall and lanky. So one day he took on one of the boys that was teasing him and Abe decided to take on the challenge – it was a tough battle but Abe won and from then on no one teased him and no one wanted to wrestle him.

Lenient: Not having many rules or expectations. When a parent is lenient that means they pretty much let their children do whatever they want.

Humble: A person is humble when they are good at something but they do not brag about it.

Nickname: a nickname is a word or group of words that people call other people instead of their name that they were given when they were born. Nicknames could be names that are short for their names like “Wes” for Wesley or “Dan” for Daniel. Alternatively, they could be names that fit what they look like; people with blonde hair are sometimes called “Blondie”. Boys who have the same name as their father are sometimes called Junior.

Work on today’s section of the timeline! 1828-1834