10 Ways to Teach your Kids About Voting
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Teaching your kids a little about voting each fall will help them understand the importance of this great opportunity to have their voices heard.
It will help them feel prepared as they approach their 18th birthday and their first voting experience!
Your kids will learn about…
What is voting?
How to find the facts about issues and candidates.
How to make informed voting decisions.
How learning about voting can be fun!
Here they are…
Model how you prepare for voting!
Your kids are watching what you are doing and saying during elections!
How do you research candidates and issues?
How do you decide?
How do you make voting a priority?
Use voting as a way to make family decisions such as…
Salad or broccoli?
Movie or playground?
Uno or Go Fish?
Bath or shower?
Show kids the Voting Guide and your mail-in ballot if you get one. Talk about the different parts and show them how you must follow all of the instructions so that your vote counts.
Define Popular Vote vs Electoral Vote.
Need fun voting lesson ideas for your kids? Check out Steve Carrell on Seasame Street, the Scholastic Classroom, or some non-partisan lessons at www.growingvoters.org for elementary to high school students!
Here are a few fun books about voting: If I ran for President, The Night Before Election Day, Curious George Votes, I Voted: Making a Choice Makes a Difference,
For older kids, discuss some editorial pieces, political commercials, and political cartoons. Compare and contrast them and discuss how each helps or hinders how you make decisions in voting.
Review a few different fact-checking sites, such as Factcheck.org or Politifact.com. Also, check out Allsides.com. This site offers news from the left, the right, and the center. This provides for great discussions on what the story is and how each side shares their bias.
Talk about why it can be hard to decide sometimes and what strategies you use when you can’t decide.
Remember, as kids become young adults, they may have differing opinions from yours. Here are some good reminders of how to keep a discussion from turning into an argument at kidshealth.org
As parents and citizens, it is our job to teach our kids how to take over THEIR responsibility to…
find reliable resources
to analyze that information
to make the best decisions they can
and finally,…TO VOTE!
