U.S.+Government+for+Younger+and+Middle+Kids

//Latest Update: 4/4/11 (dead links updated)// = = =Mini-Unit on Politics and Government for Young and Middle Students=

This unit takes a quick look at politics and government, and is great to use during a bigger election year. It ends with a half-day Politics and Government fair for other kids.

Session 1: Politics: Constitution and Government
What types of government have we studied (list on whiteboard)? What were they like? Which ones did you think work best? (In our case we had closely studied ancient cultures up to 1 AD the year before, but they also had been exposed to Greek and Roman cultures in earlier years. We were able to talk about concepts and terms: tribal/Big Man government/patriarchy/matriarchy/kingships/despots/enlightened despots/theocracies/class stratification and movement/Grecian democracy/Roman republicanism

When U.S. was formed, the ideas about government were different from what they had been

Ideas people had when Constitution was written: o Basic rights (what basic rights do we all have?) o Natural rights (rights people have because they are human beings—born with them and they should not be taken away unless the person agrees to it—rights come from God or just because it’s natural for people to have them) o man is basically a reasonable creature o science is good and allows man to control his world to an extent o John Locke (famous English philosopher) had written about natural rights and that the whole purpose of government was to protect people’s rights and that no monarch should have absolute power.

What would life be like without government or laws? (state of nature) o John Locke thought that we must have government and laws, and that government was a “social contract” among people about giving up some of their freedom in exchange for protection and security—they consent to follow laws in exchange for the protection the laws would give them. (good talking points can be found in the following lesson plan from Center for Civic Education: [] )

Constitution is the basic plan for the government. It lays out who does what and when, and who CAN’T do what.

Break into small groups and parcel out copies of the constitution. []

Have kids glean the jobs that government is supposed to do. Come back and share. Make a list (lead the discussion to help kids distill to the 6 basic ones: Establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense; promote the general welfare, secure the blessings of liberty) (Use dictionaries to look up words if needed).

Homework: find an article in the newspaper that mentions a federal agency and bring it in for the next lesson.

Session 2: Politics: Government Bureaucracy (how does stuff get done?)
Play the //Preamble// from //Schoolhouse Rock// and sing along ( [] )

Review list of “jobs” created in the previous lesson. Decide how many people it will take to get the jobs done. Talk about “bureaucracy” and what that means. Give some history of the development of the bureaucracy (refer especially to ancient cultures like China). Give out the chart of the government for their notebooks. (I used this one: [], first page in the document)

Have everyone share their article they clipped. Write names of agencies covered on a board. Everyone gets one or two other articles to scan (I provided, clipped from newspaper, chosen to provide a wide array of agencies). They are to find the name of a government agency. Add those to the list.

Have them break into small groups (of 4) and try to figure out which “job” those agencies fill using a worksheet. ( [|Government Departments and Agencies.doc] )

Come back together, share and discuss

In small groups, again, give information for two agencies ([|NIH and NEH.doc]) and decide whether or not agency is doing something that the government should be doing—an important job according to the constitution. Talk about making budget decisions and how much you would need to know.

Give figures about how many people are employed by the government/out of the general population (below are the figures I used but they are a bit outdated now) As of March 2002: (Figures from Census Bureau)

2,690,149 emplyed by Fed Govt (1%) 15,602,141 employed by State and Local Govt (5.5%) (554.4 per 10,000 pop.) Pop in 2000 281,421,906

Make a note that this bureaucracy needs a bureaucracy of its own (i.e., General Accounting Office, Government Printing Office, General Services Administration)

Session 3: Politics: Bill of Rights and Citizens’ Responsibilities (What is a citizen and how do we become one?)
Use talking points from [] to go over what citizenship means in the US and what the requirements are for becoming a citizen

Go over why we have a Bill of Rights (history of Constitution: [] ) and then review them using “cheat sheet.” ( [|billofrights.pdf] ) Look at different scenarios to see which “right” is involved. (use scenarios at end of the following lesson plan: [] )

Discuss amendments and the amendment process (see [] and [] for background). Go over process an amendment must go through to become part of the constitution. Look over list and dates of other amendments (part of the Bill of Rights handout). Why were they made? Are they still important? ERA—what happened to that?

Look at the Constitution again (handout from session 1). What are citizens supposed to do? What are responsibilities, anyway? (Go over personal and civic responsibility—find good talking points at [] and [] )

Being informed voters is a biggie, but lots of people don’t even vote. What can be done to help people vote?

What are some of the character traits that a good citizen might have? (use [|charactercards.pdf], adopted from lesson from The Bill of Rights Institute: [] )

Session 4: Politics: Balance of Powers (3 Branches and National/State/Local)
Give brief overview of who does what in the federal government and explain that the executive branch is more than just the President-it includes the Cabinet (explain how the word “cabinet” came to be used-- [] ) Good resources for explaining the branches: [] and [] and []

Discuss the idea of “balance of powers” (use [|balanceofpowers.pdf] as handout) Use historical documents from NARA linked (towards the bottom) in the Balance of Powers lesson plan ([]) and let small groups figure out which “check” is being used. Then discuss the list of actions by various officials (immediately below the linked documents in the lesson plan) to make sure they got it.

You can also use if you want to do more: []

Fill in the blank outline: National/State/Local powers and responsibilities. ( [|Levelsofgov.doc] and [|Levelsofgovblanks.doc] ) adapted from information at [|http://www.humboldt.edu/~economic/landscapes/lessonfour_11.html] Have the students fill these out while you go over the answers.

Discuss different types of officials and whether they are elected or appointed ([] provides good background). Have kids determine who they would go to for certain situations-Activity 2 in the following lesson plan: []

Session 5: Politics: Political Parties and the Election Process
Give a brief history of parties and why we have them. Outline some parties that they may not have heard of. Talk about why we just have the two main parties. (use background or lesson at: [] ).

What are platforms? What are the current platforms of the two major parties? How can you find out? (give several web sites so they can explore on their own later)

Learn a little about platforms and issues by playing the interactive game You’re the Candidate at []

Electoral College: Show video by Common Craft “Electing a US President in Plain English” (can be found at YouTube: [] ) You could also play the computer interactive game Electoral College Craze, []

OPTIONAL: If this is being done after a national election, you can look at the breakdown of the electoral college vote: [] or [] are good sites. I also used a write-erase board with the states and the number of electoral votes for each state. We colored the states in red or blue (use [|Electoral worksheet.pdf] as a guide for the map). It also helps to look at a “purple” map to show how mixed the vote is when you look at popular vote by county ( [|http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2008/] is a good site for this).

Give handout with timeline for elections **(** [] ) and note that Federal, State and Local Elections are different but similar. Talk about what’s on Virginia’s ballot in the current year.

Session 6: Election Day activity for other homeschoolers
We planned and ran an activity for other homeschoolers about politics and government for Election Day. It was only about 2 hours long and we asked that people come for the whole time in order to do all the activities and participate in our Presi-Dental Election (we voted on two different brands of toothpaste).

The kids did all the planning and set-up, with a little bit of help from us grown-ups in pulling together materials and things. We held the event at the home of one of the families in our group and assigned names from White House rooms to the various rooms of the house, posting signs to make them easily found.

We limited our guest number to 30 (kids) so that we wouldn’t be overwhelmed. This was the first of many events that the kids did during the length of our co-op so they were learning a lot during this time. They had to make sure they had enough activities for a variety of age groups, that they had all the supplies they needed, that they planned the activities and booths to be well-covered by their group, as well as preparing their own particular pieces of the various booths. We tried to use some things we had access to: one family had a device lit up when a person answered a question correctly by matching two items (a match game). One of us had an inexpensive “button-maker.” We also built a “voting booth” with a curtain.

We asked that those coming sign-up ahead of time (though email) by filling out a “voter registration” form (name, gender, email address, and age—which let us know what ages to prepare for—here’s a form that can be used if you want a hard copy: [] ). We also took a simple poll (Did you watch a Presidential Debate? Did any member of your household watch a Presidential Debate?, Is any member of your household a registered voter?) We held the event in the afternoon so that we’d have the morning to prepare the space.

__Some details:__
The scavenger hunt ensured the kids would pay attention at each activity—something at the booth would answer one of their questions. For prizes we used unopened kids’ meal toys and other toy favors left over from various parties, so that was not an expense.

The Presi-Dental Campaign was fun. Two of the kids volunteered to give “campaign speeches” for each of the two candidates (one was Aquafresh and the other was Tom’s Strawberry). The speeches were full of puns! At a table next to the voting booth, the kids could sample a bit of each toothpaste using toothpicks. We created a ballot ([|Election Activity Day ballot.doc]) and brought pencils so when the kids went in the voting booth they could mark their ballot and put it in a slot in the back (which opened onto a bucket to catch all the ballots). We had “I voted” stickers printed out (on sticker-backed sheets and then cut out). ( [|ivotedbuttons.pdf] )

The Balance of Government craft was made using the images of the 3 branches ( [|balancemobilepieces.pdf] ) printed on cardstock. We pre-cut the image, hole-punched them and strung them on regular cotton string. The kids then could concentrate on balancing their mobile (made with straws and paperclips). ( [|balanceofpowers.pdf] )

The Fishing for Votes activity involved using a toy fishing pole with magnets on the end, cardstock fish outfitted with magnets and labeled with one of our two Presi-Dental candidates names, a tally sheet to keep track of which candidate’s name got “caught” and chocolate mints (//govern-mints//) for a prize. The fish with magnets were in a bucket—the //democra-sea//! ( [|voteposter.pdf] )

The Bill of Rights card game was created by one of the kids but I don’t have the rules for it. It looked to be a lot of fun!

The Interactive story and bingo game was played as a fun learning game ( [|Election story.doc] ). Each time one of the debaters said one of the terms listed on the bingo cards we’d made up from various election-related words, the moderator would stop the action and tell kids to look for that term on their own board. We used smarties for markers—always a popular idea.

The Campaign Buttons craft used a button-making machine (from a craft store). Using construction paper and markers, kids could make a “campaign” button. We also hung a poster showing various buttons and slogans from historical presidential races at this booth (I had an old “I go Pogo” button I put on the poster!) (One good place for information: [] )

The Democracy Terms matching game was given in two ways—with paper cards and with an electronic game board that lit up when the person picked the correct answer.

The Platform Building activity was created using magnets and set up on a refrigerator, so the “planks” could be moved around as the kids desired. We kept the planks very simple but tried to capture what the main issue was.

One of the exhibits included printouts from this site: [] It uses cartoons to illustrate political terms. Another exhibit was about the history of political cartoons (use [|http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA96/PUCK/part1.html] and [] and [] and [] as resources)

Some of the snacks we had: Democra-cheese doodles Campaign button cookies (vanilla wafers) All-American apple pie Lemonade Candi-date bread Congressional Crackers (Goldfish)

Pictures from the Election Day activity: