The Presidential Inauguration Day with Young Children

Have you ever taught your students about the presidential election? My kids had the best time learning about inauguration day and how to vote while working on essential writing skills.

When Donald Trump was elected, we really loved learning about Inauguration Day!

I know that there are many differing opinions about our most recent Presidential election. However, I think it is really important to teach our children that they have a voice. I developed a unit on Donald Trump to use with my students. You can find it here:

Donald Trump Craftivity and Writing Project

I found an old bulletin board set that I used when I taught fourth grade so I started by showing my students some pictures from the bulletin board set along with the word wall cards from my Trump unit. I also found a newspaper article in this month’s Kidsville to share with them.

I LOVED hearing my students discuss the President. I began by asking them who the current President is. None of them knew! Several said that Donald Trump was the President. I explained that Inauguration Day will take place on January 20th, 2017. We discussed a typical Inauguration Day which usually consists of the incoming President attending a worship service, a ride with the outgoing President to the ceremony, taking an oath of office, a parade, luncheon, and a ball. The students were so intrigued by the idea of a ball! (More on that later!)

I really enjoyed hearing what my students had to say when asked what the President does. One said that he can tell the robbers not to go in people’s houses. Another said he can decide who goes to jail. One little boy said that he can call the fire department if there is a fire and another child said he can decide when it is time for everyone to eat dinner. 🙂 I gave them a very basic overview of various responsibilities that our President has.

I then gave the kids some “think time” to figure out what they would tell the President if they had the chance to give him some advice. They came up with the cutest answers and I wrote them on the board. Some of the sentences were “Practice dancing.” (for the inaugural ball, of course!) They also said he should be a good boss, watch baseball to relax, get a pet, take care of everybody, go to bed early, and protect the world. I loved that last one! I am so impressed with them!

Students were asked to pick 3 of the sentences and copy them. Many times I ask students to come up with a sentence phonetically, but for this assignment I wanted them to copy 3 from the sentences we generated together. I was pleased that they seemed to have a strong understanding that a sentence consists of a complete thought and that they were able to practice essential components of a sentence such as beginning with a capital letter and using end marks. (I am noticing that I need to work on handwriting more though!) 🙂

After they finished we looked at several pictures of Donald Trump. I showed the students my sample craft and told them that I just couldn’t get his hair right. They had so much fun attempting to create his hairstyle. As you can see, we could not figure out exactly what color his hair should be! I passed out the pieces one item at a time, but I’ve never been one to correct students if they don’t make their craft look just like mine. I love how they each have their own individual style!