How to Teach Kids about the Impeachment Process

Since my kids were tiny, I’ve never shied away from exposing them to the news and talking about current events.  Teaching my kids how to be informed citizens is one of my top priorities as a parent and as a home educator.  I want them to not only know what is going on but also, and maybe more importantly, how to critically think about what is going on and the sources they use for information.
If I don’t expose them to the news myself, they’ll learn on their own.
Hopefully, they’d use the standards I’d teach them…but what if they don’t?
So as talk of the impeachment began, I knew I’d want to thoroughly cover it.  But I didn’t want to limit it to THIS story, I wanted to talk about the process itself. And I wanted to talk about why our founders included it in the Constitution and what they meant by the wording they chose.
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5 Resources about the History

• Impeachment: How a Watergate-era Essay Can Guide Us Today
• Take a deep-dive into Andrew Johnson’s case with this set from Teachers Pay Teachers.
• This piece from the History, Art & Archives division of the House of Representatives thoroughly covers, in an easy-to-read way, why impeachment was included in the Constitution, the arguments surrounding inclusion, and why they chose the grounds for impeachment.  A MUST READ!  (They have an entire section about the history & role of House of Representatives, From the Constitution to the Modern House.)
• PBS NewsHour, a favorite news source of mine, offers this look at the history of impeachments in the US.
  [embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2pRVveiNaM[/embedyt] 
  
• This lesson plan set for middle & high schoolers encourages them to learn about and analyze six cases.

8 Resources about the Impeachment Process

• TEDEd has long been a staple in our homeschool, so I wasn’t surprised to learn they produced an excellent video about the impeachment process.  (They have additional resources, including a quiz over the video, on their website.)[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSszixvo7d8[/embedyt]
• DOGOnews, a news site for educators, has a thorough guide to the impeachment process. {mid-elementary & older}
• The Senate also has a section about impeachment, including the Senate’s role and impeachment trials in the Senate.
• A Third-Grader’s Guide to the Impeachment Hearings
• We watch CNN10 each day in our homeschool.  They’ve covered this story in a straight-foward, just-the-facts way…all in an easy-to-understand format.  (Each day, in ten minutes, they cover a variety of topics each day with one main topic.)
• PBS offers excellent guidance on how to talk to your kids about this story & the process
• Just as Time for Kids did 21 years ago, they now offer up a good, basic explanation of this impeachment.  (They have a few other articles about it.)
• Statista put together this simple chart to show the impeachment process.  I printed & laminated it for my impeachment-obsessed kiddo.