Are you able to explain to another – or to your child – what is Electoral College? How are the numbers given? What do they mean? Popular Vote? Electoral Votes? Our quest this fall was to understand enough to explain – and to understand the colors on the screen on Election Night.

We started with two You Tube videos:

Part of Nate’s English assignment from Wordsmith Craftsman is to take notes on non fiction lectures/videos.  We took the opportunity to take notes from these two videos. Jon took notes as well.

Next – We took a break to make Caramel Apples.  Yum.

Then – We sat down to play The Road to the White House Card Game. I snagged one from Knowledge Quest before the sold out. As you start to pull cards and build your ‘won’ states, you quickly see how important some of the states are.

The boys could quickly see that the popular vote was vastly different than the electoral vote – depending on where the cluster of states were. They quickly saw New York, Texas and California as vital – and saw that they needed to group some of the smaller electoral number states as well. Incredible to learn through games and fun videos!

Now, the boys switched to chess, the apples are half gone – and we will use the map as we watch the results come in tonight. And for the first time, our whole family will know for sure how those mysterious electoral numbers were created.

Surprise – Nate won every game. He could see the numbers the patterns. He was lucky and got the Vote for Me cards that let you move around more – but he still won each game. Anyone need a political campaign worker – he’s your guy.