Election day education
Today was spent with four fantastic young kiddos (5-year-old twin girls, a 6-year-old boy, and his 8-year-old sister). In honor of election day, we decided to prepare pretend campaigns for Kid President. We also created ballots and voted on the order in which to do our other planned activities for the day.
We began by discussing the definition of a political platform. Through our conversation, we simplified it to: “the reason we should vote for you.”
The six-year-old ran on the platform of free candy for all and gingerbread houses every day! His VP would be “a gingerbread minecraft guy.” The ethics of regularly eating gingerbread houses with a gingerbread VP may have been over his head.
One twin ran on the platform of real unicorns for all! If elected, her Vice President would be an actual unicorn, and her Secretary of State - a stuffed rabbit named Isabella. She promised a real live actual unicorn for every American household. Hard to top that.
Following that, the second twin sister’s campaign slogan was a bit of a pleasant surprise. Be kind and respectful to everyone.
She said Ruth Bader Ginsburg would be her vice president (I can’t make this stuff up). And after we researched the specific roles and responsibilities of the Secretary of State, she nominated the 8-year-old friend for the job. The 8-year-old happily obliged.
We then watched some real political advertisements promoting former presidents and other candidates they had heard of. We discussed what types of information the advertisements contained and what they would like to include in their own political advertisements (we’ll start working on those tomorrow). We discussed the definition of a political slogan and why people use them. I told them about how James Garfield ran his unexpected campaign from his front porch, and the 8-year-old mentioned that George Washington also didn’t want to be president.
Lastly, we read the book Duck for President by Doreen Cronin and talked about how it can be hard work to run a campaign. Being a leader is a big job.
I think tomorrow I would like to discuss that it is also important to have a plan for how they could make their political platforms reality, if elected. We need to discuss and consider whether their ideas would actually be good for people! What would happen if we all ate tons of free candy every day? Would unicorns like to live in our houses? Does everyone want a unicorn in their house? How can we solve the problems associated with their ideas?
These little humans are big dreamers.
Buckle up for this rising generation.
They give me hope.