Monday, November 22, 2010

A lesson in civic duty

On election day, the kids had an opportunity to witness a wonderful right afforded to all American citizens aged 18 and over. We are fortunate, in that our precinct is across the street from us at one of the local schools. I took Jonathan with me so he could see how our voting system works. I prepped him ahead of time, showed him a list of candidates I would be voting on, discussed what fuels our choices and how important this role is as Americans. I also informed him of proper etiquette while he waited for me to fill out the ballot and reminded him gently not to pepper me with his usual zealous eleventy billion questions such as, 'who are you voting for, MOM?', 'who do you think THEY'RE voting for, MOM?', 'I think everyone should vote for a pro-life person, MOM!' - you get the idea, lol.

This is a huge check in the "plus" column of homeschooling. Any time I've taken the kids with me to vote, they have been too young to understand or the older ones were in school and didn't get to witness it. This time, Jonathan got to help me place the ballot in the box and he took an 'I voted' sticker to put on his shirt.

When Neil got home, he headed over to the precinct taking Jonathan and Paige with him this time. Ashley opted out only b/c of laundry in the dryer.

Without being prompted, the kids went upstairs and made their own ballots and played 'Election Day'. Here are a couple of the "ballets" that Jonathan came up with.

1 comment:

confused homemaker said...

That's awesome!! He'd get along so great with my oldest, because we had the same ballot creations going on here. Well not the exact same I think our ballots dealt with elections in a Lego Universe ;)

website statistics