I have always used election years as the time to teach my kids about our U.S. elections process. This year, more than any other has brought up lots of questions and discussions. While my older two children have a pretty solid base to work from, my youngest is really just starting out learning about elections. I hadn’t planned ahead for her this year and thus began thinking about what I could do for a U.S. Elections Unit Study for her.

I was thrilled to find the U.S. Elections Lap-Pak from Home School in the Woods as an option for our homeschool. {Disclosure: I received this product for free and was compensated for my time in writing this review. All my opinions are my own, honest thoughts and I was not required to post a positive review. Your experience may vary. Please see my full Disclosure Policy for more details.}

U.S. Elections Unit Study

The U.S Elections Lap-Pak is a self contained unit study that covers everything from the establishment of our country’s government, the various aspects of a presidential campaign and finally, how we choose a president.

What I love about this lap-pak is that it has everything you need in one download, with fantastic finished product photos, well organized instructions, and easy to follow guides.

U.S. Elections Lap-Pak Activities:

• Definition of “Election”
• Different Forms of Government
• The American Experiment
• The Three Branches of Government
• Suffrage
• Who Do We Vote For?
• Terms of Office
• A “Handful” of Political Parties
• Caucuses & Primaries
• National Conventions
• The Presidential Campaign: Platform
• The Presidential Campaign: Stump Speaking
• The Presidential Campaign: Media — News Source
• The Presidential Campaign: Campaign Advertising — Spreading the Word!
• Raising Money
• Statistics
• Election Day
• The Electoral College
• Inauguration Day
• The Electoral Race!
• The “Vocabinet”

How We Use The U.S. Elections Lap-Pak

Before I started this with my 4th grader I went through and printed all the components out and made the base lap book. While it might seems a little complicated the instruction for folding and adding in sheets to the lapbook were clear and easy.

As you can see below each part of the lapbook is headed in green. Along with that (over to the right) is a button to click on and a large sized photo of the completed component pops up! That makes it super easy to know how it goes together. As an added bonus there are audio files that you can listen to of the text being read.  We would often turn this on while she was working on each piece as a reinforcement after having just read it herself.

Once everything was printed and ready to go we sat down together and went over the general gist of how the lapbook is assembled and how the pieces correspond to the reading in the printable book. Then she set off on reading a section and creating the corresponding lapbook piece.

We chose to do a bunch of lapbook components before adding them into the lapbook. For the ones that weren’t attached we simply stored them inside the lapbook along with a print out of the layout for reference.

This is the product for you if….

• You are busy and like something that is all in one, just print and go.
• You like flexible scheduling – this lap-pak allows you to go at your own pace. Add things in where you want or not, do a bunch all at once or one at time!
• Great for visual, auditory and hand-on learners as there is a bit of something for each!
• Especially good for those cut and pasters in your life!
• You want a portfolio of sorts to show off your child’s work. My daughter keeps each and every one of her lapbooks on a shelf in her room to look at over and over again. It is almost like her own personally made book collection!

Find out more about the U.S. Elections Lap-Pak from Home School in the Woods. The instant download is $19.95

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