Learning All About Votes

Hey ya'll!! Stephanie here from Falling Into First -- and Second.. ;)  It's President's Day! For those of you who have the day off like me, I cheers my Starbucks to you this Monday morning. For those of you that don't, we're hoping to make your life a little bit easier this week by sharing some new ideas and activities to recognize past and present Commander In Chiefs.

 

 The Electoral College. It can be about clear as mud for adults to understand. Let alone kids. 

But by 2nd and 3rd grade, I think kids are old enough to start digging a little deeper into how the votes really add up. I always do a mock classroom election this week after we've spent some time learning about Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. But this year, I'm taking a cue from my friend, Grace. 

Grace For President is not just has a darling story about a young girl who runs for class President. It also does a really excellent job breaking down the Electoral College into kid friendly language. Their class has an election where each child is assigned a state. Their individual vote is worth the same number of  Electoral Votes as their assigned state.

This year when we do our mock election, I'm going to assign states and electoral votes to my class too. We will do some MAJOR math together adding up all the numbers.  I typed up this quick reference sheet for teachers so that you can have this information at a glance.

Click HERE to download.

I'm linking up with one of the other amazing OWL gal authors, Amanda, of Teaching Madness!! She's just started a Must Read Monday linky and I so was thrilled to have this post to link up today! Stop by to see what everyone else is reading this week.

 

Happy President's Day!!!