Zach's elections

Sure has been an interesting election season, hasn't it?  We have a new element to consider in our house - Zach's interest in this whole process.  We don't tend to talk a lot about politics in front of our kids, but we have talked about the importance of voting, and he's been learning about the election in school too.  So he's been asking some interesting questions, and even staging his own elections!

This picture is of a very physical election Zach created.  He was happily setting up the vote amongst his Mario guys in our toy room when our 8 year old neighbor came over.  She expanded it greatly, pulling out every single car, Little People person or animal, and other miscellaneous toys, and giving them the vote too.  I don't quite understand what we're looking at, but each line represents votes for one candidate, and within those lines some toys were granted more votes than others (that wagon full of animals was worth about 50 votes, I think I heard).  Don't ask me who the winner was, or what exactly they won!

Zach's class held an election today, for president.  He filled out (and brought home) a little ballot - complete with pictures of Obama and Romney on them.  The result?  The kindergarteners were overwhelmingly in favor of Obama, 14-6.  I wonder how many electoral votes their class gets?

This afternoon Zach was hard at work, creating ballots for each of his Mario guys.  The candidates were his green Yoshi (he has several differently colored Yoshis) and the random frog tub toy he got at the dentist yesterday.

I was impressed with his diligence - he created about 30 ballots, each one with "Frog" and "Yoshi" written on them, with a bubble to fill in next to each name.  He apparently doesn't believe in anonymity in voting; each ballot had the initials of the voter on them.

Top left is Donkey Kong's ballet (DK), bottom right is Dixie Kong's (DixK)

Scott and I each got a vote too.  We asked for a summary of the candidates beliefs; once I heard that Zach likes to argue with the frog and that Yoshi is a nice guy, I voted Yoshi.

Zach and the candidates - the winner was Yoshi!!!

Considering how the last few days have gone, it's going to be interesting to see what questions Zach has for us in four years!