Preschool voting with the iPad

We all scream for ice cream!  Need a way to decide what kind of ice cream to serve at the end of the year preschool party?  Model a great decision making strategy for your class by voting.  Voting provides opportunities to practice many skills. Voting can be an individual or a group lesson.  A child can travel around the school, polling adults, practicing social skills along the way. Skills such as greeting others, initiating interactions and asking questions such as "what is your favorite ice cream?", can be targeted. The entire class can get involved by setting up a polling station so that each child can cast his or her vote.  Higher level thinking skills can be promoted by asking students to predict the results of the poll and compare their prediction with the results.  Counting, one to one correspondence, assigning numerals to sets of numbers and writing numbers are other skills that can be practiced when determining the results of the poll.  The concepts of more, less, many, same, equal, and few, can be emphasized when analyzing the results.  

The iPad can be used as a polling device for your next voting lesson.  In the first example, I used the Pages app to create a template to open in Doodle Buddy.  In the Pages app, I inserted images of two different flavors of ice cream on a blank page and then took a screen shot of the page by pushing the home button and power button at the same time.  I cropped the Pages border out of the picture using the editing features in the Photo app on the iPad.  The next step is to open the Doodle Buddy app and select the tic tac toe icon, then select Photos.  Locate the screenshot on your camera roll and select it.  Tap the chalk icon and choose a color to make your dividing line.  Next, choose the stamp icon and select a stamp for voters to use to indicate their selection.

In the second example, I used Pages to create a template, adding a table to create a basic graph.  

If you do not have the app, Pages, you could make the templates on your computer with another program and then use Dropbox to transfer the template to your iPad.  Another alternative is using the drawing tool in Doodle Buddy to make the template.  You could draw pictures to represent the choices and then draw a grid. Take a screenshot of this template and then open it from the Tic Tac Toe icon. If you want to discuss the results with the group, you can connect the iPad to the projector.  Have fun voting!