Students at Lincoln Elementary School have been learning about its namesake during the week of the 16th U.S. President's 200th birthday. On his birthday, Thursday, Feb. 12, the school celebrated Lincoln Day with an explosion of learning about Abraham Lincoln.

"All throughout the week we've been (telling) stories about Lincoln," said Valerie Willham, librarian at Lincoln.

"With the younger ones, for instance we talked about how Abraham Lincoln would carry letters in his hat. A lot of people don't know that, but he did because he was actually a very messy person, and he didn't want to lose the important letters, so he put them in his hat, so he would have them with him," Willham said.

Students in the room behind her listened to teachers Jill Taylor and Christie Dopson take turns reading a book about Lincoln.

Principal Pat Coen, dressed as Lincoln, paused in each room to witness the activities taking place.

In the gym, children stood in a circle. A teacher would pretend to put a button in someone's hand, and the children would have to make poker faces so no one else knew whether or not they had the button. A student in the middle of the circle would then guess who had the button.

"We're talking about how kids back then didn't have all the toys and the electronics and things we have, but something as simple as a button could become a game," said Karen Conrad. "So they learned how to play 'Button, button, who has the button?' and then we also played gossip, where we whispered something in each other's ear and saw how much it changed over time (between passes) and even learned how to play duck, duck goose, and those were all games that were appropriate to the era when Abraham Lincoln was little."

"And they had a blast! You'd never have thought that these kids would have so much fun with a button, but they did," Conrad said.

In another classroom, Joy Conwell, circulation/special collections assistant at Iowa Wesleyan College told a group of children about Abraham Lincoln's connections to families in the area during his era.

For more, see our Feb. 13 print edition.