Olympic Games
Starter
Parent/s dress up in sports clothes in the morning and welcome your kids to the Olympic Games! Who knows what are the Olympic Games? The biggest sports competition in the world. Imagine 10,000 people from 200 different countries. That’s a lot of people from a lot of different places getting together to do sporty games. It’s also a really big sports party: they play sports and want to win a medal but they also celebrate getting active, friendship and being together.
The first Olympic games was in Greece (show this on a map or globe). But now each time the Olympics take place in a different country, every 4 years (translate that into your kids' ages). When the Olympics first started a long long long long long long long long time ago it was just one event: a short race with a bunch of guys who ran naked! Now it’s grown into 17 days and 300 different races/games (and everyone wears clothes!). It’s huge. That’s not all: there are summer olympics and winter olympics. Because you can play different sports in different seasons. In summer, what kind of sports do you think they play? Swimming, running, gymnastics. What about winter? Skiing, ice skating, snowboarding. There are also the Paralympics: for people with disabilities, that means people who are blind can’t see or have one arm or use a wheelchair. We’ll talk about that more in a few days...
...because this week, we’re bringing the Olympics to our home! We’re going to play sport inside our home, play games, make games, draw games, it’s going to be fun. Everyone in the Olympics is trying to do their best, and it brings together so many people in a good way to do fun things. First thing we’re going to do is watch this short clip to really SEE what I’m talking about.
You see how much energy that takes? This week especially, we need to make sure our bodies have enough Olympics fuel and energy, that means eating well and sleeping well, so that we can play well and do our best. Let’s say it together: LET THE GAMES BEGIN!
Olympic Team Spirit:
- Mount a Team Family Sign for the week
- Each time they do a sport, they get a medal/draw it on your team sign
- Each day, everyone in the family dresses in the same colour t-shirt according to the 5 different olympic rings >> day 1: red, day 2: green, day 3: black, day 4: yellow, day 5: blue
- You can also draw up an event timetable listing all the sports you are going to do over the week OR adding them to an empty 'medal board' as you go
- Make it social: get your friends to join you in doing 'Olympics Week'. Share how you went during the day or at the end of the week!