Join a tree-chopping experience to learn about how Abraham Lincoln grew up! Although he received little formal education, his upbringing and childhood experiences taught him honesty, perseverance, and a hunger for knowledge and truth. Today we will learn:
How will you celebrate the ideas of freedom and truth on Abraham Lincoln’s birthday this year?
Check out this book on Abraham Lincoln:
https://www.amazon.com/Abraham-Lincoln-Ingri-dAulaire/dp/1893103234
Special Extension Activities:
1. Based on your children’s developmental levels, discuss the following quotes:
“In the course of my law reading I constantly came upon the word “demonstrate”. I thought at first that I understood its meaning, but soon became satisfied that I did not. I said to myself, What do I do when I demonstrate more than when I reason or prove? How does demonstration differ from any other proof? I consulted Webster’s Dictionary. They told of ‘certain proof,’ ‘proof beyond the possibility of doubt’; but I could form no idea of what sort of proof that was. I thought a great many things were proved beyond the possibility of doubt, without recourse to any such extraordinary process of reasoning as I understood demonstration to be. I consulted all the dictionaries and books of reference I could find, but with no better results. You might as well have defined blue to a blind man. At last I said,- Lincoln, you never can make a lawyer if you do not understand what demonstrate means; and I left my situation in Springfield, went home to my father’s house, and stayed there till I could give any proposition in the six books of Euclid at sight. I then found out what demonstrate means, and went back to my law studies.”
— Abraham Lincoln (c.1863)
“If A can prove, however conclusively, that he may, of right, enslave B — why may not B snatch the same argument, and prove equally, that he may enslave A?– You say A is white, and B is black. It is color, then; the lighter, having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own. You do not mean color exactly?–You mean the whites are intellectually the superiors of the blacks, and, therefore have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with an intellect superior to your own. But, say you, it is a question of interest; and, if you can make it your interest, you have the right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he has the right to enslave you.”
(https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/slavery.htm)
2. Math Activities:
Ages 3-6 - Draw several types of triangles on your board of choice and count their angles and sides. Draw some triangles with matching angles and side lengths and point that out!
Ages 7-10+ - Draw triangles with various colorful markers. Use a protractor to find their angles!
Add the angles in a triangle and discuss how they will always have a sum of 180. The study of geometry leads to the stu