Voting!

This week and Monday of next week we are learning all about voting!! I first thought that this may be a little difficult for them to understand, but let me tell you...they are doing amazing!!!

I started my lesson this morning by showing them the online video on elections by Let's Find Out Scholastic magazine (You can sign on and show your students HERE).  Then, they read their own Let's Find Out at their reading group. 

The story had some wonderful vocab words-candidates, polling place, booth, ballot, etc. We made sure to go over all of them and I will be using those terms all week!

Then, I explained to students that in order to vote you have to register. I showed them my voter's registration card and then we made our very own!

How cute are they!! They are from Glady's Election Unit that you can find here.  I had my students find their own birthdays on our birthday chart and copy it down. Then I wrote the school name and 'kindergarten' on the board for them to copy. I really wanted them to do all the work :)

I explained to the children (as stated in the Let's Find Out magazine) that when it is time to vote, you have to show your voters card. I told them that I will check their name off to make sure they only vote one time, then they will enter the booth. The booth is private so they can vote secretly. My children took this SO seriously and they were SO excited to get started!!

I am using different questions to vote, from Deedee Will's Survey Says unit. Then, I just created different ballots to go with her questions. 

Look how cute they are in our booth...

Later in the day, I opened the ballot box and we graphed the results. Today, pizza was the winner for the best food!! :) Yum! 

Every day we will vote for something new, then on Monday of next week we will make our choice for President. 

I will say, some of my students were making opinions on Obama and Romney today--I was cracking up! In the Let's Find Out magazine it talks about how Obama likes basketball and Romney likes skiing. Then it said that Obama likes chili and Romney likes granola. Some of my students were so grossed out by the chili for some reason and decided that they liked Romney instead! I told them to hold off on any decisions until we learned more--and to make sure they kept their opinion a secret!! Too funny!

America

We are wrapping up our America Unit in class and I am so proud of how great the students have done! This has been one of my favorite units this year!  We used many activities from my America unit!

Every morning we learned about a different American symbol. We first made a KWL together as a class then I transferred the information to our class tree-map.  

The students would use the information to write in their 'America the Beautiful' writing notebooks for the week. They came our adorable!

We also made some cute bald eagles ..and we've been watching the Decorah Eagles online everyday (I am obsessed) Our class named the mom eagle Liberty and the dad eagle Bell :)

 We focused on George Washington and Abraham Lincoln during this unit. We measured out a life size Lincoln (the children LOVE doing this! They stand next to him all the time!) and did a directed drawing of George Washington.

 We also measured out the Statue of Liberty's foot and the children drew gorgeous pictures...

Today the students painted a map of the United States (from my unit) and we did a super fun science project (from Deanna Jump's unit) to show how penny's can turn green just like the Statue of Liberty did!

 

Now we are moving on to our Suess-tastic Unit :)

Oh where, oh where have I been?

I feel like I have totally abandoned my blog! For one, I was away for the long weekend and two, I AM EXHAUSTED!! I have been so tired these past two days, I am not sure the last time I have felt like this! But anyways.... :)

I went to Austin and had a wonderful time! We spent the whole weekend eating! They have so many delicious restaurants and food trucks! My favorite was the cupcake truck of course!

Hello..deliciousness!

Luckily, I ran some of that food off in the marathon. The race was great, but I have never ran up so many hills in my life.  Everything is flat here in Florida!

 Me on the right :)

This week in class we started learning about America.  We have been doing some super cute activities that I will post about this week.  For now I will share with you this cute little activity that my kids did. I don't give them any patterns and they end up coming out so different and so cute!

 "I would ride in a private jet"

 "I would help people that don't have homes."

 "I would make everyone go to school for 7 days" WHAT?!!?  ;)

 "I would paint the white house pink."