Real-Life Homeschooling

We were all at the edge of our seats last night staying up late and watching Obama's speech---which of course, was counted as school (nothing like watching history unfold before you!) and this morning when we awoke I decided to scrap what we had planned on the school agenda today and instead use what we have learned over this past election as a valuable learning tool. Here's what we did:

We had 'in-house' voting and chose a pool of qualified candidates (McCain, Obama, pastors we knew, daddy, papa, their uncle, etc) that we wrote on our board and the voting began. It was great fun to hear to giggles and laughter as they voted. We finally narrowed it down to daddy and their uncle and of course, daddy won!

We created our own ballots (okay, we really printed some ballot templates on line) and had everyone fill them out. Not just with political questions but also others, such as 'which do you like more--carrots or peas?' My older daughter compiled all the information and made a statistics sheet and we also added in printed info on voting and both parties.

We colored printable coloring pages of presidents, and used wikipedia to find some great facts about them. Did you know Nixon is the only president who has resigned and he was on the republican ticket 5 times? Three times for president and twice for vice president. We took all this information and made little booklets out of it all for a presentation for daddy later that night.

And lastly, I had them pretend what they would do if they were president and write out a list of ten things they would change in the world if they could. They also had to choose a running mate. I really enjoyed the lists, here is a sample of Naomi's (10 yrs. old):

IF I BECAME PRESIDENT I WOULD....

1. Stop abortion
2. Stop wars
3. Help the poor
4. Stop drugs
5. Stop murder
6. Make everyone go to church
7. Help the hospitals
8. Less immodesty (in the world)
9. Make everyone be homeschooled
10. Make everyone be a Christian

(I think we need to review and study our constitutional freedoms a bit more clearly, wouldn't you agree?)

For the future election to be held 2012, I had them pick who they would like to see running and here were a few of their choices:

1. Jesus

2. Daddy

3. Mark Driscoll

Aren't they just so funny?