Election Resources

Thanks to all who have sent links, book lists etc.... I thought it would be nice to share the list I'm compiling with you. This is a work in progress. The * items are ones that I plan on using or hope to use.... It quickly becomes apparent that the focus will need to be narrowed for our quick unit study. I plan to focus on the ELECTION/VOTING PROCESS and not delve into various Presidents etc. Again, thanks to all who emailed suggestions. Hope this helps others looking for a quick and inexpensive unit study.

Free Unit Studies
*12 week study from OK Homeschool Assoic - Thanks, Lisa and Cindy.
PBS Lesson Plans on all things to do with Elections Thanks, Michelle.
*Election Unit Study and Lapbook - thanks for turning me on to these folks Debbie and Lisa B.
Little Blue School - unit study hosted on blog

Websites:
*Electoral Map - updated Daily
Secrets of the Presidents (PBS KIDS)
White House Kids Presidential Biographies and coloring pages (supposed to be there but I've not found them).
*Scholastic Kids Election
*Fact Monster Presidential Elections
*Ben's Guide to US Government for Kids or here to pick your level.
Pew Forum
*Congress for Kids
Electing a President - fun things to do, unit studies etc.

Blogs
*Free Technology for teachers - blog - electoral college and more (thanks Debbie)

Enjoy the Journey - retells their unit; the book list had been sent to be prior to my finding her blog, and the links are ones I had found, but I found it HELPFUL to read another's thought on the unit when she was DONE.

Games, Puzzles, Toys
The Path to the Whitehouse - Free
Classroom Election Kit - Kaplan - 6 -9 (38.95)
*Geo Puzzle Red State Blue State Political Map Fat Brain Toys (13.82)
Politics the American Government in Action - 8 - 108 ($39.95)
Race for the Whitehouse 12 - 99 ($22.48)
Mayfair Games Road to the Whitehouse 12 - up (20.37)
Hail to the Chief 10 - 13 ($28.09)
All American Trivia - Junior (15.89)
Presidents of the USA floor Puzzle (11.99)
Vote Buttons - think I can make some cheaper and just as cute!
Action Figures and Bobble heads of the candidate of your choice


BOOKS..... Liz sent this list from her co-op, however, I've seen parts of this list on several websites.... and now I've added to it. LOL I DO have permission from LIZ and from DEANNA (co-op teacher) to share this list. I have NOT read each book, ultimately you will need to preview the books to see if they are appropriate for your family. The bold titles are ones I've found at our library - in fact if you can't find these books, spend some time in j324.6 and you'll be able to make some good finds. As you can see I couldn't find most the books on the list, but I have a LOT of options here for our studies.


1. Landslide! A Kid's Guide to the U.S. Elections(Dan Gutman)
2. DK Eyewitness Presidents
3. Time for Kids: Presidents of the United States (Lisa DeMauro)
4. So You Want to Be President (Judith St. George)
5. If the Walls Could Talk: Family Life at the White House (Jane O'Connor)
6. Presidential Elections and Other Cool Facts (Syl Sobel)
7. Don't Know Much About the 50 Presidents (Kenneth C. Davis)
8. Duck for President (Doreen Cronin)
9. The Everything Presidents Book (Martin Kelly and Melissa Kelly)
10. The Buck Stops Here: The Presidents of the United States (Alice Provenson)
11. Woodrow the White House Mouse (Peter W. Barnes and Cheryl Shaw Barnes)
12. Woodrow for President (Peter W. Barnes and Cheryl Shaw Barnes)
13. House Mouse, Senate Mouse (Peter W. Barnes and Cheryl Shaw Barnes)
14. Marshall, the Courthouse Mouse (Peter W. Barnes and Cheryl Shaw Barnes)
15. A "Mice" Way to Learn About Government (Peter W. Barnes and Cheryl Shaw Barnes)
16. Series of Books - Childhood of Famous Americans - George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson, Harry Truman, Thurgood Marshall
17. Series of Books by David Adler: A Picture Book of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, John F. Kennedy
18. America votes: How our president is elected (Linda Granfield)
19. Election Connection: The official nick guide to electing the president (Nickelodieon)
20. Vote! (Eilen Christelow)
21. The Voice of the People (Betsy and Guilio Maestro)
22. The vote: Making your Voice heard by Linda Scher
23. Elections in the United States (David Heath)
24. Electing the President by Barbara Feinberg
25. Running for office: A look at Political campaigns by Sandy Donovan
26. Presidential Elections by Syle Sobel
27. Presidential Elecctions by Miles harvey (this is a cornerstone of Freedom book) Very good read.
28. The 2000 Presidential election by Elaine Landau
29. How the Us Government Works – How they all come together to govern a nation (Syl Sobel)
30. We the kids- the preamble to the constitution of the US by David Catrow
31. Winners and Losers: How Elections work in America (Jules Archer
32. Power to the people: How we elect the president and other officials (Kevin Cunningham)
33. Our Elections (Richard Steins
34. Campaigns and Elections (George Sullivan)
35. The Voice of the people: American Democracy in action (Betsy and Guilio Maestro
36. It’s a Dogs live: Hank the cow dog
37. The kid who ran for president (Dan Gutman)
38. Otto Runs for President (Rosemary Wells)
39. The Election Book: The people pick a president (Scholastic)
40. Election Day (Miles Harvey)
41. JC Watts Jr.: Charaacter counts by sarah De Capua
42. President George W. Bush: Our forty-third President (Beatrice Gormley)
43. Don’t know much about the presidents (Kenneth C. Davis)
44. House Mouse Senate Mouse ( Peter W. Barnes)
45. Voting and Elections (Patricia J. Murphy)
46. U.S. Presidential Inaugurations (Andrew Santella)
47. Woodrow the White House Mouse (Peter W. Barnes)
48. The President’s Cabinet and how it Grew (Nancy parker)
49. Lives of the Presidents: Fame, Shame and what the neighbors thought (Kathleen Krull)
50. Freddy the Politician (Walter Brooks)
51. Ask me Anything about the presidents by Louis Phillips
52. Citizenship by Jason Skog
53. Class Election from the Black Lagoon (Mike Thaler)
54. Class President (Johanna Hurwitz)
55. Democracy by Liam O’Donnell
56. If I Were President by Catherine Stier
57. If I were President by Judy Datschke
58. The Look it Up Boo of Presidents by Wyatt Blassingame
59. Marvin Redpost Class president by Louis Sachar
Take a Stand - Daniel Weizmann
The Ballot Box Battle - Emily McCully
Presidential Races - Arlene Morris-Lipsman
When Esther Morris Headed West - Connie Wooldridge
Your Right to Vote - Mark Sanders
The 2000 Presidential Elections - Cornerstones of Freedom
Don't Know Much About the Presidents - Kenneth C. Davis
The Story of Presidential Elections - Cornerstones of Freedom
Margaret Chase Smith - A Woman for President - Lynn Plourde
DK Vote - & CD

©2008 D.R.G.

*Arctic Homestead: The True Story of one Family's Survival and Courage in the Alaskan Wilds* by Norma Cobb and Charles W. Sasser

From the book cover: "In 1973, Norma Cobb, her husband Lester, and their five children, the oldest of whom was nine-years-old and the youngest, twins, barely one, pulled up stakes in the Lower Forty-eight and headed north to Alaska to follow a pioneer dream of claiming land under the Homestead Act."

Norma Cobb was the last woman pioneer to sign up under the U.S. Homestead Act. I found this story to be interesting, readable and fun to read. It made me fall in love with Alaska all over again.

©2008 D.R.G.

WINNERS

Hayley (and Jodi) as well as Amy have won copies of Saturdays with Stella. Please contact me and I'll get your book to you!


©2008 D.R.G.

Whine or Shine!

“Do all things without grumbling or disputing; so that you will prove yourselves to be a blameless and innocent, children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I (Paul) will have reason to glory because I (Paul) did not run in vain nor toil in vain.” Phil 2:14-16

I call the above verses my “whine or shine” verses. Our reactions to responsibilities, circumstances, crises will determine how we are perceived in the world. Do we whine? Do we grumble and dispute? If so, we’ll appear like the rest of our generation.

Do we want to shine in the midst of our generation? Then we simply must decide not to whine. We will begin to shine in our generation as we walk out Paul’s command. We will draw men to HIM because we will stand out…we will reflect His glory.

Join me this week in making a stand to shine and not whine!

©2008 D.R.G.

Friday - Saturday

Friday was typical. Produce co-op and then PWOC project night. It was a fun night. There were only 3 of us, so instead of me bringing dinner in, we simply walked to Subway.

This a.m. was a Chaplain's Spouse breakfast. Fun. We didn't realize we had occupied the table for 2.5 hours. We plan to do this monthly.

I headed to the library after breakfast and worked on lesson plans for our upcoming school week. I also scanned the shelves for books on the voting process. I'm finding that it will be very necessary to narrow our focus. I really don't WANT or NEED to do a study on Presidents...I need to stay focused on the election process, the right and responsiblity to vote, the mechanics of the party system and electoral college. I'm working on a post that lists all the great resources folks have shared, and things I've found.

Bre called while I was in the library. That was funny. I hid in the bathroom and tried to talk until someone was waiting to get in. The library has a new system now that flags you when you have more than 50 books checked out. I was shocked. The lady told me, "you must never have had 50 books out before."

I replied, "I'm a homeschooler. I've had way more books out than this at a time."

The she admitted that the rule has been 50, but they haven't been able to track it until they got this new system. I never knew the rule. I had to put some books back to get my limit to 50.

I felt ill and came home.

I spent the afternoon sleeping. Mike took the kids to a local park. Then he took them to a local school to fly a kite. They came home, bathed, watched an Adventure in Odysesy and are in bed.

That's our rousing weekend.

©2008 D.R.G.

Thursday

There are new machines at the gym. WHEW - the AMT is good. I really worked but it said I burned less calories. The trainer said that 15 min on it was worth twice that on the normal elliptical.....but I sure didnt' burn the calories I wanted too. These new machines have individual TV screens...so if I remember headphones I'll be able to watch something besides CNN.

The kids' piano lessons were cancelled today - but that turned out to be a blessing. Nolan is going to begin them too.

I was SAD that it looks like our excellent homeschool drama class at a local studio isn't going to fly this semester. There's always next semester. Basically, the local homeschool co-op changed their day to the same day as drama and the drama studio didn't know in time to rearrange their schedule to pick a better day. She is so GOOD with the kids. I really am hoping they can take more classes with her before we leave. The owner of the studio works at the gym so we talked about it this a.m. I told her if someone showed up to give me a call and I'd have the kids to the class within 10 minutes. She will. LOL

Here's yet another blanket fort.

©2008 D.R.G.

School AGAIN

I got home from the gym and got ambushed. The RULE this year is no computer until school is done. I knew that there were some moderator things I needed to check on on SHS. How did I know this? Because I checked email early before I left for the gym. Then when I got back, I sat down at the computer. BAD move. Conviction galore. I really need to quit that. I guess I should say EARLY hours on the computer are fine but after 6:45 a.m. NO computer time until school is well underway or done.

45 minutes later Jamin asked if I could help him register from the SAT and ACT as I was "at the computer". 1 1/2 hours later we finished. Grrrr....

Now it was lunch time.

I decided not to do "book school" with the younger boys. They love to color and such. The Science Notebooks are a hit. I got out a couple of the History booklets for our Knights Lapbook and we worked on those.

I don't know WHY Zander looks so pained. Debbie, I thought about your question about Stacia some more. No, she doesn't always cooperate with school. She DOES love it when we are working on projects and insists on being in the middle. This is not always helpful, but I've begun to plan for it. ::snort::

We discussed the parts of a knights armor. Zander picked the knight from the level 2 lapbook and Nolan picked the knight from the level 3 lapbook. I got both of these from Homeschool Share.com (no, I'm not an affiliate). ::snort:: I love the fact that this site is full of unit studies, worksheets, lesson plans, lapbooks that HOMESCHOOL MOMS have written and decided to SHARE with one another. FREE. ::snort::

Zander's work is on the right. I engaged him. He learned....we have to approach it a bit differently than expected. LOL Notice his colorful knight. He is VERY imaginative. The sword and shield are red because the knight "plunged them all the way into the dragon" and the story goes on from there. The poor man's shin guards are different colors because he laughed at a man and so God gave him a purple shin guard, which isn't very knightly at all.

The other project they began is a timeline pocket for the lapbook. This was a lightbulb moment for me. I've been trying to figure out what to do for our TOG timeline. I refuse to keep long, involved notebooks for little ones. This project has 8 historical events. They are coloring them. I'll laminate them. Then they'll store them in that pocket. They'll play a game and put them in order. I'm thinking I could do THAT with our timeline dates.....or find a place that does this so I don't have to come up with the images. ::snort::

Arielle is running me ragged. She has read 4 books that were to take 3 weeks EACH and we are in our 2nd week. She has read ALL the assignments (history core, in depth, supplemental) for both weeks....we had our discussion today. I do need to help her plan out her work a bit better next week. She's doing great with all the new parts of the program that she's adding in at the Dialectic level (because I don't require them in the grammar level). She missed some parts that I wanted her to do.

Jared had House of Faith this afternoon. He's teaching one of the story groups this year. He had Civil Air Patrol tonight.

Jamin is still working on getting his book finished and in the right format to submit to a contest. Oh, if God would allow him to win, I'd be so excited. He'd not have to worry about college expenses, he'd be published....he could move on to the next big goal. LOL I am eagerly awaiting the chance to read this. He let Krista and Mike read it to edit. Arielle grabbed it and read it. I read the short stories that it grew from and there is a HUGE story there....it's called The Leper King...and oh the short story was good, and discussing his ideas with him are good......I want to READ it. I'll get a printed copy when it is done....I didn't do too well with my favorite parts being edited out of the last book. ::snort::

That's it for another day of school. I'm exhausted...and the house isn't clean...tomorrow is produce co-op....and I didn't make it to the library.... but I think we got enough school done.

©2008 D.R.G.