Interactive Activities

The following are ideas for interactive activities for a children’s story time or Sunday School that relate to military taxation and federal spending priorities. They are informal ideas that can be modified as needed.

For information on the US budget and military spending, click here.

• Penny Poll – Give the children 10 pennies and show them a list of government programs such as education, healthcare, transportation, military, etc. Let them decide how they want to distribute the pennies to spend on each program according to how important each program is to them. Then show the amount the government allots to each program, and discuss what the differences between their spending priorities and the government allotment. Discuss where all the money now used for the military could go if it were not spent on the military.

• Pie Chart/Bar graph – Make a circular paper that represents a pie chart of government spending, or a similar bar graph, but leave it unlabeled. Have a list of all the programs that should go on the chart or graph, and have the children match each section of the pie chart or each bar to the corresponding government program. Discuss where all the money now used for the military could go if it were not spent on the military.

• Snack Idea - Make a large round cookie or cake that represents the U.S. budget. Or, make a batch of cookies and divide them up into groups representing spending for different U.S. government programs.