Gummies & Government

An Activity For You and Yours

PART I
Directions: In this activity, you will be creating a graphic representation of different
forms of governments from around the world. Here are the steps to do the activity:

A. Get a package of gummy bears, fishes, and worms. You can pick these up at the
local grocery store. Some will be given out to students who are in class.

B. The candy represents types of leaders and the people that they rule over.

C. Arrange the bears, fishes, worms to represent the following types of government
structures within societies. This will require you to do some research on each
type of government. Take pictures of each representation. Upload at bottom of
this document.

Monarchy You have the pink and blue bear which

represents the king or queen who is the
leader. The two white bears are the
kids/family who the power will be passed
down to. The fish are the people.

Oligarchy The worms represent the group of people

in power based on their wealth/race. The
fish are lower class people and the bears
are the mid class people. The laws have a
different impact on each group because
they are made to fit the worm's needs, so
the bears and fish will have little to no
benefits.
Democracy The fish and worms respectent the group
of people who vote for their
representatives. The bears are the
representatives that the worms and fish
voted for. The bears make sure that no
one of them has more or the most power.

Theocracy I did all bear because a theocracy is run

by a religious leader and I wanted it to
seem like they all are a group but the blue
bear is the leader

D. Arrange your gummy citizens to reflect what you consider to be an ideal type of
government structure. Take a pic of it and add it to the bottom of this document.
For extra credit, arrange the citizens into a representation of what an anarchy
system might look like.

My ideal type of My Ideal government is a democracy

government because people in the government are all
(Democracy) different and there are benefits for
everyone not just the higher class people.
Also they is check and balance in our
government so no one can that over
Anarchy I made three groups for anarchy because
I feel like people do their own thing but in
those groups of people doing their own
thing some are diverse well others
categorize people, so with these groups
being different things can get crazy and
out of hand at times. There are also times
where it’s easy going an no problems

PART II

Answer:

What are the benefits and disadvantages of each system in your opinion? In other
words, how can each system effectively run a government and what might each system
have issues with?

Monarchy:
Benefit: King/Queen never changes
Disadvantage: No checks and balances
Oligarchy:
Benefit: It is all the forms of government
Disadvantage: Run based off of wealth
Democracy:
Benefit: Run by representatives
Disadvantage: Not every likes all representatives
Theocracy:
Benefit: As one leader
Disadvantage: it is run by a religious leader
Anarchy:

Benefit: No government

Disadvantage: No government