Election Day! (With lots of freebies!)

Woohoo! A teacher workday! Except, it's full of meetings.  One of the kiddos said to me the other day "Miss Francis, you're always in meetings!" True story. Thanks for realizing, little ones.

Anyway, we still have a little bit of time to work in our rooms/finish report cards (I'm done! I finished those early! What!? I should have thrown a party to celebrate *that* happening for once!) so maybe I'll finally get the page 'My Classroom' completed. Check back in a few days and see.

Since we had a lone Monday divided from the rest of the week by Election Day, we spent almost all day yesterday covering the concepts of campaigning and voting in an election.  Students listened to the story Grace for President and filled out their Voter Registration Cards.

If you'd like your own voter registration cards, click GRAB 'EM HERE! 

Then we had two mock elections.  The first one was just to get used to going to the voting booth with our voter registration cards.  Also to decide the very important matter of what special snack we'd be eating in the afternoon: popcorn or chips?  Rachelle from SweetKindergarten made the ballots and recording sheet for this.  You can grab your copy HERE.

The voting was very hush-hush so it would be a SURPRISE when we counted the ballots.

During math time, we counted the votes.  We graphed and tallied the data and compared to see which snack won!  The kids were pumped that popcorn won.

It was important to do a little election like this so students understood that what they voted for might not be the popular vote and they wouldn't necessarily get the results they wanted.  Once students understood the concept of voting, we were able to hold our other (more serious) election: CLASS PRESIDENT!

You can get the template for class president campaign posters here and here. Sorry they're in two parts. Just do a quick cut&paste before running them in the copier. ;)  If you'd like campaign posters for class jobs instead of president, you can get those here!

Students campaigned by making posters and explaining why they'd be a good candidate.  Students voted by a show of hands to narrow down what names were placed on the official ballot.  At the end of the day, students cast their votes for Class Prez.  Be sure to check back TOMORROW for the reveal of our NEW CLASS PRESIDENT!