Summer Boost
Activity:
Political Party Animals
This November, it's elephant versus donkey! Does your third grader understand the meaning behind the animals political parties choose to represent them? Make this political lesson a fun one by framing it as a creative art project -- she'll even get to choose her own political animal.
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What You Need:
- Paper
- Crayons
- Colored pencils
- Marker
- Pencil
What You Do:
- Help your child use a pencil to draw a chart on her paper that has two rows and six columns. Encourage her to make her chart fill up the entire page
- Once she has her chart complete, let her draw over the lines with a marker.
- Have her write "animal" in the top row and "characteristic" in the bottom row of the first column.
- Explain to your child how her political party animal chart will work. The chart has two categories, animals and characteristics. She will fill the empty squares with pictures and words that fall into one of these categories.
- Animals first! Have your child use colored pencils and marks to draw animals in the top row. Encourage her to start with the familiar donkey and elephant before moving on to her own picks.
- Help her brainstorm animals to use. She can use her favorite pet or something more exotic like a snake or a tiger. Encourage variety.
- In the bottom row, she'll write the kind of characteristics she associates with each animal. Start with the elephant and the donkey. Why would the Republicans and the Democrats want to use these respective animals as their mascots?
- Time to move on to her own animal picks. What characterstics does she associate with each animal? Maybe a word like "fun" could work for a monkey while "sneaky" would perhaps be more appropriate for a rat or a fox.
- When she's done with her political party animals, ask her to think about what sort of animal she would want to represent her if she ever ran for political office. Would she be a mighty bear or a lovable otter?
