Olympic Celebrations and Study

We've been celebrating the Olympics this week in our home!

Our first project was talking about the origin and meaning of the rings and painting our own.


(Michael's abstract version)

We made our own torches and (independent of me) the boys held torch relays in the yard.


Later that day, John Paul and I made a chart where we will track the medals won by ten different countries.  He drew those flags!  I had the big map out so we could locate each country and he could copy the flag onto our chart.  Chart idea found here.  You can find out medal results here.


The next day we made some salt dough medals and after baking, we painted them in the appropriate colors.


There may also be some 'laurel' wreaths put together later this week and we'll be reading from some of our history books that talk about Ancient Greece and the origins of the Olympic games. 

And today we had our own belated opening ceremony party.  Because I inadvertently scheduled a meeting last night, we got all 1994 and taped the ceremony on our very much used VHS tape pulled out for such special occasions.  Oh yes.  I'm pretty sure this same tape has also been used for old Commish and X-files episodes.  It worked out better anyway since letting them stay up wouldn't have made anyone happy today.  Turns out after watching some of it when I got home that the middle part was just too weird and lame to show the boys anyway.  I wish they would cut out a whole lot of the pseudo-art weird stuff and let the torch lighting and parade of nations take the prominent role, but that's just me :)

Our lunch party even had some Olympic flair:  




Like our 'torches'?  We're pretty fancy here ;)

We watched the first and last parts of the opening ceremony.  I cried, of course.  During the parade of nations we tried to find the newly introduced country on our map as quickly as we could.  


We don't have cable so it'll be a challenge to find the different events.  And we'll be learning the events as well.  Do you know there's trampoline??  Like as a real event?  For real.  But even just watching a few of the popular events on the normal network station will be enough to capture some memories, inspire greatness, and cheer on our awesome country.

As the boys like to say:  Go America!

Putting together our Olympic rings fruit tray

In awe of the torches




4 comments

  1. Replies
    1. Great ideas. I love the fruit salad rings. I may just use it. Torches are great, too. Both the ones to carry and the ones to eat. All of the olympic games are available on line. I will check if I still have the web site info. Have fun and GO AMERICA!
      Grandma H

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  2. Mary, you are too much! I started shaking my head at the fruit rings! I need to send my kids to Aunt Mary's camp so they can do cool stuff like this. I don't think we get NBC so I haven't even mentioned it to them.

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  3. Olympics are so fun, aren't they? And a great teaching tool. WE, too celebrate either opening or closing nite with some fun, festive food- either food from the host country or different kinds of rings we can make (onion rings, etc.) I love watching all the events too and will let the kiddos watch a little more tv than usual for these fun events! (they are even on in the day- even on regular tv)

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