Election Day In an Elementary School

As we all know this election, I believe, has brought the worst out in people and I for one surely didn't want to see that happen at school.  I had heard about the book One Vote, Two Votes, I Vote, You Vote a Cat in the Hat book by Bonnie Worth and published by Penguin Random House.  If you go to http://www.seussville.com/catinhat4prez/ you could see the causes that they chose for the children to vote on.  Random House is giving $10,000.00 to the winning organization for the cause.  The website had each cause paired up with a Dr. Seuss book.

The Causes were:

Education you read The Cat in the Hat and the organization is Firstbook.org

Ocean Conservation you read One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish and the organization is oceana.org

Environment you read The Lorax and the organization is conservation.org

Fight Hunger you read Green Eggs and Ham and the organization is feedthechildren.org

Kindness you read Horton Hears a Who and the organization is pacer.org/bullying


I think it was just genius to write this book which does talk about electing a President but to then for them to link them to these causes which is something the kids could really talk about and care about.  Let's face it the children if given the chance will vote exactly how they hear that their parents are voting.  This way gave them a cause that they could relate to better and even care about.

The one bad thing is we won't know for sure who won until after December 1st.  The kids are dying.

We set up voting like a real polling place.  We had an alphabetical list of all the students and they had to come in with their voter registration cards filled out, sign their name and then enter to vote.  When they were done we had paper bracelets that said "I Voted" for them to tape on their wrist.  It was wonderful and I highly suggest doing this for elementary children.

We set up two computers in our Challenge lab for privacy

A 5th grade teacher helping to monitor

Waiting patiently just like in real life with their voter registration cards in hand.

2nd grade had just been talking about it in their class.

Finding names in our Voters book

Back in class with their bracelets and smiles

The kids were getting tired of waiting but that is real life.

Now if anybody were to ask me what I would do different, well I would have some parent volunteers not just myself and my aide, I would have more polling computers and I would put it in another room so that the library could still function.