Every four years we have the power to VOTE! This is a responsibility that we must embrace and teach our students to embrace. So how do we teach such a big idea to our students, even when it might be scary or overwhelming? We make it fun and kid-friendly.
We use our Your Choice resource to introduce elections and voting as making a choice. That’s something kids understand so they learn that elections are about making a choice.
We teach about making a choice and counting votes. Elections are great for social studies and math lessons! So here’s what our election week looks like:
- Day 1: Spin and graph-data collection and analysis. We talk about counting votes, greater than less than, etc.
- Day 2: Making A Choice: Dogs vs. Cats. Students vote for dogs or cats and they explain why they chose dogs or cats. This lesson helps students see the importance of knowing why you make a choice. Students then analyze the votes and the data.
Day 3: This is another lesson on making choices. Students vote for the favorite election book and they explain why it’s their favorite. And we analyze the data.
- Day 4: We learn about the candidates in the election.
- Day 5: We host our Presidential election. Students enter the voting booth and cast their secret ballot. Students make their vote and fold their paper and drop it in the ballot box. This ensures their vote is secret.
- We tally the votes and declare a winner! And each student gets their own “I Voted” sticker!
To make our voting booth, I just used some red, white and blue bulletin board paper and spray painted a box blue!
Everything you need for your election unit is included in our Election creation. There is both a print version and digital activities that are perfect for distance learning!
Election Art Projects
We also do some fun and simple election art projects to decorate our classroom.
Each student made their own campaign poster! They made a self portrait and a flag and added the slogan!
After reading Duck For President, we make our own duck!
Here are some kid friendly election videos:
FREE SIGHT WORD READER about Election Day!
Here is a Read It Up resource that would be great for elections as well!
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