WriteBonnieRose Resources for Teaching U.S. Gov. & Election: Review {& Giveaway!}

Recently, I’ve had the pleasure of receiving from WriteBonnieRose.com resources for teaching about the U.S. government and the election process. Today, I’ll share a review of the products I received. Plus, WriteBonnieRose has kindly donated a giveaway for one of you!

The three products I received:

Branches of U.S. Government Coloring Book C

Does Every Vote Count?

Race to the Oval Office Game (This is our giveaway!)

About WriteBonnieRose.com

Whenever possible, I like to share a little about the people behind the products I review. Bonnie Rose worked for many years at SchoolhouseTeachers.com as a writer, educator, editor, and director.

A talented speaker and writer, Bonnie Rose writes in several genres, but always with a Christian worldview. With a heart for missions, she has a special focus on the persecuted Christians. You’ll find numerous learning resources on her website: Bible, literature, science, music, and art. She also offers helpful resources for writers.

Everything offered on the website comes as digital downloads or e-books. Therefore, there are no shipping and handling fees.

In addition, the terms for the use of the products are very generous: “For use by a family, this unit can be printed and copied as many times as needed. Classroom teachers may reproduce one copy for each student in his or her class. Members of co-ops or workshops may reproduce one copy for up to fifteen children.”

There is something there for every age and grade. And moms will enjoy all the freebies offered.

And much to my delight, Bonnie Rose also has an abundant supply of educational resources about American history!

Branches of U.S. Government Coloring Book C

This coloring book is how I first learned about the available resources on our government and the election process. Several months ago, the coloring book was offered as one of the many subscriber freebies. Now, it’s only $1.49, which is super cheap for a thirty-one-page e-book. This coloring book introduces students to the branches of the U.S. government and how it works.

The Branches of the U.S. Government Coloring Book is offered in several formats. Level C includes cursive copy work. For my homeschooler, the content was a quick review before we began the more intensive study.

Even though my student is a teen, I downloaded this coloring book because he needed to practice neatly writing in cursive. He opted out of the coloring, but he didn’t consider the writing portion too juvenile for him because of the subject matter. I asked him to trace the information first. Then, go back and copy it again on his own. This worked well for us. Perhaps this will also help your wavering writers.

After this, we were ready to dive into a more in-depth unit study.

Does Every Vote Count? Unit Study

This four-week unit study contains twenty-three pages that help students look at the electoral process from the ground up, starting with local elections and working up to the presidential election.

While this unit study is designed for students ages 11-18, I think younger middle school students may need some guidance. It’s challenging but in a good sense. Students must research for their answers—especially on the local and state government sections.

Because the unit study is sold to students from every state, students’ answers will vary. Therefore, there is no answer key for the worksheets so the parents/educators will have to verify the answers. Safe, website suggestions are given as sources for informational research. This is an opportunity to not only talk about internet safety but also the places students can research for accurate information.

One of my son’s favorite activities was the sheet about ballots. Since my father regularly works at the election polls, I had him to go over the questions with my son. This made it a little more personal for him and of course, my dad loved sharing with him.

The unit focuses on history and social studies but also incorporates math, art, health, and language arts. Due to time constraints, we mainly concentrated on the history and social studies but we did do an art lesson and several language art lessons.

You can see a preview of this unit study’s contents as well as five of the work pages at WriteBonnieRose.

After a week or two into the unit study, it was time to have some fun and play an educational game.

Race to the Oval Office Game

This is a game the whole family (ages 9 and up) can play. If you know all the answers, then you’ll put me to shame. I found a third of the questions fairly easy and the rest were challenging! But, it was a fun way to learn together.

“Find out which player’s knowledge of government, history, and the electoral process will win them the electoral votes needed to reach the Oval Office with this fun game that includes 210 trivia questions.” 

See a preview of Race to the Oval Office.

The Directions for Play

1. When a player lands on a state, he has to give his campaign speech (answer a question). The other player draws a card from the top of the pile of question cards and asks the question to the first player. If the first player gets the answer correct, he wins the electoral votes for that state and puts one of his tokens (square with an X on it) on the space to show that the state has been won. He takes the card that represents that state and writes down the number of votes he has won. Keep a running total of votes as players win states so that players will know when someone has enough electoral votes to win the game. 

(*I thought Step #2 was fun. I’m glad our nations’ presidents don’t actually win by answering the most trivia questions correctly!)

2. Note that if a player lands on either Maine or Nebraska, there must be a debate. These two states are the only states that divide their electoral votes according to popular vote. All other states give all of their electoral votes to the candidate who wins in that state. In order to debate, the player who landed on the state is asked one question for each electoral vote that state has (Maine=4 questions; Nebraska=5 questions). For each question the player gets correct, he gets an electoral vote. For each question he gets wrong, his opponent gets an electoral vote. (excerpt of rule #2)

2. Keep a running total of the electoral votes each player has won. When one player wins 270 of the possible 538 electoral votes, he or she wins the game! Players can choose to end the game then or continue to play until all states have been won to determine the margin the winning player has won by. Be certain to update the player totals as each state is won so the totals are always known by all players.  

Altering the Rules

In the beginning, because we didn’t know many of the answers, the game would sometimes get long. We decided to say whoever had the most electoral votes within a certain time frame, would be declared the winner.

However, once we began memorizing the facts, the game progressed more quickly and we abided by the original rules. Again, this prompted a discussion about the value of rules and regulations in our country’s election process.

Recommendation & Giveaway

Let me just say how much I, the parent, learned about my local and state government by going through this unit study! Needless to say, my son learned a great deal as well—especially about our county and state officials.

I recommend you check out these three items and all of WriteBonnieRose resources on her website. Everything I’ve seen thus far has had great content and is well priced.

The products I reviewed were colorful and well designed. Lightning took out our color printer but the resources printed very well in grayscale. Any game pieces that had to be identified by color, we just used colored pencils or cardstock and it worked just as well.

Bonnie Rose is generously giving away a free download of the Race to the Oval Office game to one of you!

We will do the drawing as usual. The winner’s name will be randomly selected from this blog’s email subscriber list on Sept. 18, 2020. If you’d like your name entered into the drawing twice, then leave a comment below as well.

Even though this post is on the government and the election process, this is not the place to hold a political debate or make a campaign speech. Just share your thoughts about the above products or other ideas you have about teaching the election process.

We’ve got a winner! The name randomly selected from the blog’s email subscriber list was Elaine T. from Ohio. If she doesn’t have students who could benefit from the game, another name will be selected. And, we’ll send Elaine a different prize. Congratulations, Elaine!

I received a FREE copy of this product in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way. All opinions I have expressed are my own or those of my family. I am disclosing this in accordance with the FTC Regulations.