Introducing Children to Space: The Lincoln Plan (1966)

 I have happy memories of learning about space in school. A number of my friend's dads worked at JPL (The Jet Propulsion Laboratory) in Pasadena. We happily absorbed visions of the exciting space age.  Finding this book is like finding a photo album of my classroom in those "golden" years.

Introducing children to space: the Lincoln plan.  United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration.; Nebraska. University Teachers College. (1966) 159 p. illus., map. 27 cm. NASA-EP-36

The Lincoln plan was Lincoln, Nebraska's curriculum plan for how to bring spaceflight ideas into the elementary school classroom  It was eventually published as a NASA educational publication. Like many early NASA publications it is online here: http://hdl.handle.net/2060/19840069191

I remember having a current events board like this in my classroom.  I also remember well classroom lined with space posters to help us think about what the next frontier would be.

It is really fun to see that my memories of being immersed in space stuff are not just an exageration. We really did sit around in class and watch launches and other events on television. We thought we were witnessing history.

And we really did dream of the future. We thought by 1999 we would be out in space ourselves.  We were sure that the exploration of the Moon was just the beginning for us.