Abe gives the Gettysburg Address

Abe and I both memorized the Gettysburg Address during this unit. The two younger boys know large chunks of it, but they can't get through the whole thing without help.

I think I had memorized the Gettysburg Address, at least partially, sometime in the distant past, and of course it's all really familiar to me, but it was surprisingly hard to move from there to actually having it truly memorized. It's that last section---with all its "rather for us" and "for us the living, rather" and "to be dedicated here" and "to be here dedicated"---that really gets me. Abe and I were in gales of laughter as he tried to help me get it. And I finally did, and so did he. I think he does such a great job reciting this; he really gives the sense of the words as well as the words themselves. Which is good, because I feel like my Abraham ought to have a special bond with the words of Abraham Lincoln.

Here he is, wearing his Abe Lincoln beard and Daisy's magician hat from last year---which doesn't quite fit his head---but it adds a nice touch. :)

Abraham Lincoln and a Log Cabin craft

While I was reading up on Abraham Lincoln for this unit, I kept thinking how overdone the whole Log Cabin thing is. Don't we know anything else about Abraham Lincoln?, I kept wondering. But . . . then I wanted to listen to Copland's Lincoln Portrait, and it seemed like a craft would be the perfect thing to keep everyone busy and quiet while we listened. And then I ran across a blog post about a 3-D log cabin, which seemed way more fun than the usual 2-D ones I remember making in 2nd grade. So we did it. And it was fun.

We found some really excellent children's books about Lincoln, too. He is one of my heroes, and I love reading about him. Here are some of the books we liked best:

Lincoln Tells a Joke

Mr. Lincoln's Boys

Abe Lincoln Loved Animals

I liked the way these books focused on some lesser known aspects of Abraham Lincoln's life (besides the log cabin, ha ha) and gave some insight into his character. Plus, they were charming (the animals one is adorable---he rescues baby birds!).

As a barely-related (but very interesting) side note, we watched this video showing the odds that we, in our hot cocoa this morning, drank some of the same molecules Abraham Lincoln drank in his coffee the morning of his Second Inaugural Address! :) Fun.

To make our log cabin, we followed the pattern here. We used the hot glue gun and as you can see, both boys are holding ice packs on their fingers here. It's about time someone besides me got burned with that thing!

We glued a portrait of Abraham Lincoln above his door. And made him a little park bench to rest on.

Honest Abe