ElectHer Day Parties: Taking Full Advantage of November 8

Everyone!  It’s happening.  It’s really, REALLY happening.  People are already voting for Hillary in places where early voting exists.  See?  This is from my friend’s facebook earlier today:

AAAGH! OMG!  I am SO excited.  And I know lots of you are too.  All of this got me thinking with my teacher brain.  This is an exceptional teaching moment.  Maybe one of the biggest of our lives.  So, I’m proposing that we start planning ElectHer Day parties for us and for all the younger ones in our lives.

What would ElectHer Day Parties Look Like?
Any good party has to be fun, and the same is true with any good lesson plan.  Good lesson plans are also interactive and informative.  While parties are routinely interactive, they are not always informative (unless you are a nerd like me and love playing games like Chronology, which is amazing and you should buy it).  But ElectHer Day Parties can be all three things.

Informative
While #ImWithHer so much, my ElectHer Day Party will be more about the momentousness of electing the first female President of the United States than it will be about all of Hillary’s awesomeness.  And once you open it up to a mini-history of gender like that, there is so much you could cover in an ElectHer Day Party that this is really a question of time and age of your audience.

Great resources to consider include:

• this article reviewing 11 Ordinary Things Women Weren’t Allowed to Do In the 50’s and 60’s (and much of the 70’s) — things like open a bank account or run in the Boston Marathon;
• this excellent webpage from history.com reviewing The Fight for Women’s Suffrage in the US — including short videos and lots of fun lists that would help to make up trivia questions like “Who was the first woman to run for President?” or “What Was Susan B. Anthony convicted of doing in 1972?”;
• the coloring pages and worksheets (free to download and print) that are themed for Women’s History Month but also work for the ElectHer Day festivities;
• the movie Iron Jawed Angels or, less applicable because it isn’t the U.S. but also perhaps less disturbing for younger viewers the movie Suffragette;
• the timeline about women’s history firsts and key dates; and
• this fact sheet about women’s educational accomplishments, compensation relative to men, and management positions as of early 2016.

With the above, it shouldn’t be too hard to put together a trivia game, word searches, crossword puzzles, or coloring and activity sheets.  Boom!  You’ve nailed the informative part of this ElectHer Day party!

Interactive
Obviously, the best activity for an ElectHer Day party would be going, en masse, to vote. Imagine, for a minute, what it would feel like to go with a group of friends and family to go vote for the First Woman President in United States History!  Now imagine how this could be a memory that includes the little people in your life.   Kids remember this stuff — the solemnity and the elation; and they care about it — they will understand this is a part of figuring out what it is to be an adult.  If you can arrange your schedules such that you can go as a group and if your polling places line up, I highly recommend it.

But you can also have them make stickers to wear on their clothes and coats when they go with you to vote, signs to carry, or simply pictures and posters to decorate your ElectHer Day party venue.  Blank labels, construction paper, poster board or markers is all that’s necessary.  For those of you feeling more adventurous, you could get supplies to make your own T-shirts or to paint other small craft projects according to the theme.

For those of you who can run late into the night, you could also make up vote-tracking worksheets or could use a whiteboard, chalkboard, or conference-sized chart paper for everyone to mark the progress of votes as they come in.

Also keep in mind that ElectHer Day parties could happen the night before, particularly if you want little people to do some of the activities above before you take them with you voting but you need to go in the morning or folks have to vote in a range of different polling places.

Fun
Doesn’t all of that sound fun?!  I mean, obviously, it sounds SUPER fun.

So, if you have space to host, start sending out invitations!  If you don’t have space, start emailing, texting and tweeting (#ElectHerDayParty) until you find someone who does!

Or turn your usual online presence into a virtual ElectHer Day Party by tweeting out the trivia and facts you want from above and  posting pictures of what you see when you get to your polling place.

Whatever you do, get out there.  Vote.  #ElectHer