Preschool Friends and Elections

Today we headed to the preschool to spend some time with the youngest members of the MPI family.  We sat with the four-year-old class and listened as Ms. Iris read us a story.  She gave us some tips on how to best read with our preschool friends.  Next week, we will take turns reading to the preschoolers in their classrooms.  This is an excellent opportunity for our third and fourth graders to practice reading with expression and fluency!  After the story, we were able to spend some time with our new friends.  Our class had a blast helping the preschoolers build towers and paint pictures.  Some of us even got a head start on reading stories!  We hope to also spend more time with the preschoolers throughout the year doing different activities.  Check out photos in the gallery!

This week we started discussing the upcoming elections.  We began by listing everything we knew about electing the president.  Our class has many students who are up-to-date on election news!  Some of the facts that we already know are the names of the candidates and their running mates, the names of the two major political parties, and that there is an electoral college.  Along with these facts came many questions, such as what's the difference between a Democrat and a Republican, how old do you have to be to run for president, and what
exactly is the electoral college?  For the next six weeks we will research to find the answers to these questions.  Our inquiry will include each student casting his own vote for president and following the election to see who comes out the victor!

It's quite amazing how strongly some of our students feel about the upcoming elections.  We definitely have some students who are very passionate about the election of our next president, so passionate in fact that we had to have a discussion about being respectful of the beliefs of others.  In class we stressed that we would emphasize facts about the candidates rather than the opinions that people, mostly the media, have of the candidates.  We agreed that if we support one candidate, we would do so without saying negative comments about the opposing candidate.  

Don't forget, the Elementary School BBQ is tomorrow.  I hope to see you all there!

Posted on September 19, 2008 2:35 PM | Permalink