Election Day

Isabelle has been very interested in this election, asking lots of questions, and learning new words like Republican and Democrat, and McCain and Obama (even asking the question "Mom, is God a Republican or a Democrat?"). And this morning in Mass, she turned to me and whispered in my ear,"Mom, I just saw Sarah Palin!"

Anyway, I ran across this explanation of the electoral college on this homeschooling mom's blog
and decided to try and explain it to Isabelle. To try and reinforce what she learned, we used 2 labeled cups, as you can see by the pictures, along with an United States map of electoral votes, and a bowl full of M&M's (we used red and green, pretending the green are blue) to represent the electoral votes each candidate would receive. We had the TV on as soon as the election coverage started, and Isabelle would run from the TV to the table, counting M&M's and putting them in the appropriate cup, and coloring in her state map. To her dismay, however, (and ours too of course), we were seeing much more green M&M's than red, so around 7 that evening (about the time the media called the election), Isabelle poured each candidate's "electoral votes" back into the bowl and threw up her hands in disappointment.

So yes, we're disappointed in the outcome, but we pray daily for President-Elect Obama and his family and staff, and we're thankful for a great learning opportunity!