Winter Olympics: Pk-4

Jessica's Week: 

This week we celebrated the Olympics. I didn’t have time to do sports week in the fall so I figured this would be a special substitution. As it turned out, most of the winter sports were a bit too obscure and there really aren’t as many good resources for this type of a theme. We still tried to have fun with it and while it wasn’t a highly successful theme I am glad Taegan at least became familiar with what the Olympic Games are and how they work. Maybe we will be ready to try this one again by summer 2020. 

We started this lesson with geography. I wanted T to know a little about South Korea where the games are being held and how countries from all over the world including the US send athletes to compete. We used printed mini flags to locate and represent a dozen or so of the most common winners. Then we watched the opening ceremony as a family while T danced around singing our anthem and waving her flag. She represented America well lol! 

For sports we focused on ice dancing, hockey, bobsled, and skiing. Since we’ve already been to the ice rink this year I decided to let her skate around indoors using wax paper on the hardwoods for skates. This actually works rather well and was a fun, easy movement activity. We also made a cardboard box sled for stuffed animals to bobsled and timed how long it took to get them down the stairs. We did do some outdoor hockey lessons but also made a miniature rink from ice frozen onto a cookie sheet. To represent skiing we colored cardstock ski jumpers and attached them to straws. T could blow them off and measure how far each jumper went using large LEGO blocks. 

Finally, we spent some time reviewing sportsmanship and the concept of working as a team. I had Taegan make several crafts of the Olympic Rings while I explained that each ring represents a different continent and how they all come together intertwining for these games. We made a gold medal from a sauce jar lid and some ribbon while I explained how teammates must count on each other and work together to “win” at many events such as dancing, hockey, and bobsled. The book “Tacky and the Winter Games” was a good example of teamwork and T spent the rest of the afternoon organizing teams of stuffed animals and my little ponies to compete in her own sport games.