It’ an election year! I’m sure your students hear talk from their own parents about who they will vote for and why. Obviously, talking details about an election to kindergartners is not appropriate, but you can still celebrate our democracy and have fun with mock election activities.
Introduce the Vocabulary
There are a lot of big election words that you can still introduce to your students. To make a lesson like this work is to create mock elections that relate to your students.
Candidates
With this mock election, I animals that students love! You can have a quick alliteration lesson with the names too! Harry the Hamster, Flippy the Fish and Tommy the Turtle are all running for this election!
Platform
This is a big word, and your students will feel like they are election pros when they use these big vocabulary words! Each candidate has a platform: ways to improve their school! This will help your students understand why we choose our favorite candidate!
Transform Your Classroom
It’s voting day for your classroom! This is a perfect time to transform your classroom for your students to vote.
Place the candidate and platform posters around the room, along with a specific place for the voting booth. Each student will get to go to the voting booth with a ballot they can fill out.
Have students watch you count the ballots and celebrate the winner. This is a great opportunity to teach our little ones how to react when their candidate wins or loses.
This mock election proves that even though our learners are young and they aren’t old enough to vote, they can still learn about our democracy and why we hold elections! It’s a great way to show how special America is!
