Election Night party

Whoa, this picture is bright.

This peanut butter cup pie was really good.

Speeches and Ribbon Flag

We talked about how public speaking is an important part of running for office (and other parts of life, really), and we talked about the kind of speeches that political candidates give. Then I found this online teleprompter, which is SO FUN. So we wrote speeches and took turns giving them to each other, with the assistance of the prompter. (The most coveted position was that of Teleprompter Controller.)

I guess I don't have any pictures of Malachi speaking, but he was great. Here is his speech: 

"Hello, my name is President Malachi. I am going to give a great speech about all the things I'm going to do. I am going to make a law that nobody can go in the White House without permission. I will make a very tall White House with 100 floors and a big point and a tram that goes to the roof. And I will make an escalator that goes all the way up, and there will be a huge rocket that I could ride in. Bye-bye now; thank you for listening to my great tall speech."

We also made this American flag for our door, out of ribbons. I think it's quite cute (if slightly uneven). We followed the instructions here . . . sort of. Our ribbons were a different width and that made everything more complicated. But we had fun anyway!

Elections Unit

This unit was on Elections. We did a government unit earlier and learned about different political systems, but this was focused on mostly just our American election process, including the electoral college etc. 

As you can see, we had a lovely time experimenting with "hanging chads," "dimpled chads" and so forth :)  [A few weeks later, Malachi came running in excitedly after he'd been trying to use the three-hole punch to put a piece of paper in his binder. "Mommy! Look! I got three hanging chads!" So cute.]

We went on a field trip to a campaign office and learned what goes on there (quite interesting---but would have been more interesting in another state, perhaps) :)

One of the best parts of the unit was when my cousin Heidi came to speak to us. She's a city council member in American Fork, so she told us about running for office, what her duties include, her favorite parts of the job, and so forth. It was fascinating. She's our favorite politician!

More resources:

http://pbskids.org/democracy/be-president/ My kids liked this "President for a Day" game

http://www.c-spanclassroom.org/Special-Offers.aspx Electoral map, with historical electoral totals included

http://magazines.scholastic.com/election-2012 Another fun game (you \have to click on "electoral challenge game" on the right)

http://bensguide.gpo.gov/files/Ben_Activity_webversion.pdf A coloring book of American symbols

There's also an interactive White House tour at the White House website. My kids thought it was pretty cool.