Special Guest Blogger Marie-Claire Moreau
The Vancouver 2010 Olympics are here with a boat-load of teaching opportunities for you and the kids! Coming only once every two years, the Olympic games won’t be here long…you don’t want to miss the learning and fun while it lasts!
Children of all ages can learn by studying the Olympic games. In fact, adults in the family will enjoy it, too, making it a great family activity all-around. With the great variety of events and daily television coverage, everyone will find his or her favorite sport, athlete, or country to support.
At a time of year when so many families become bored with the homeschooling routine or antsy for spring to arrive, studying the Olympic games can bring about a welcome change of pace and fresh enthusiasm for daily lessons. From locating countries on a world map or charting scores and medals, to following individual athletes and observing flags, costumes and customs, no other world-wide event brings about so many learning opportunities and fosters such good feelings all at the same time.
Asking yourself how you’ll squeeze Olympics units in with your already existing curriculum? The answer is, don’t do it! Choose instead to focus on the Olympics for just one subject, one hour, or one day at a time. Studying the Olympics in lieu of any “regular” social studies, geography, or physical education curriculum will allow you to enjoy the events without causing much disruption to the teaching you already do. At times like this, it’s impossible to predict all of the different paths your learning may guide you but, guaranteed, the learning gains out-weigh any other missed lessons, hands-down.
Watching and learning about the Olympics can be distributed across the curriculum in many different ways. There are many outstanding teacher resources already available on the Internet, so don’t bother creating any of your own. Sit back, start clicking, and find something you think your children will love. Start with this list of links, and off you go!
Suggested Olympics lesson plans and ideas (note: some of these activities date back to earlier Olympics but they are just as relevant for the 2010 games):
- Official Vancouver Olympics 2010 Education Page The only official Vancouver games site
- Vancouver 2010 Olympics, a comprehensive list of lessons and resources from Ed Select
- List of lesson plans, crafts, and other great ideas from Lesson Plans Page
- Directory of dozens of Internet links to lesson plans and activities Enjoy!
- Great list of lesson plans covering art to math, nutrition to gold from A to Z Teachers Stuff
- Another great directory of winter games links for teachers and students Many choices!
- “Gold Medal Olympics” activities page from Education World
- Let the Games Begin! also from Education World
- Standards-based K-2 Olympic lesson plan from National Geographic Xpeditions
- “The Olympic Games and their host cities lesson plan” from MicroSoft (requires readily available software)
- Mini-unit on world celebrations for grades 2-3, with references from Teacher Link
- The mother-lode of lesson plans, with over 1,000 plans and reviews by teachers provided by Lesson Planet
- Olympics lessons, quizzes, puzzles, history, and more. Includes ESL pages by ESL Flow
- Fun with snowflakes: lesson plans, art, games from The Examiner
Enjoy the winter games and have a great homeschooling experience all winter long! Go team USA
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