Olympic Activities

1-2-3 Come Do Some Olympic Activities With Me

Are you and your students following the Olympics? I'm a sucker for anything that gets a child's attention and motivates them to want to learn. I think The Olympics are a great platform for that.

Even if you don't have time to do an involved unit, or big theme day, you can still sprinkle in a few Olympic activities, so that your students can get some social studies and current events into their day.

olympic puzzles, olympic activities for kids, olympic crafts, olympic games for kids, olympic centers, olympic snacks, olympic alphabet cards, recording sheet for medals, olympic venn diagrams olympic number cards, An easy way to do that is to add these Olympic Counting Puzzles to your math center. They will help your kiddo's practice counting forwards, backwards, and by 10's to 100.

You can also print off one for each child to cut up and then glue onto a sheet of construction paper. Remind them to leave a little gap in-between each piece for an interesting mosaic work of art. Click on the link to view/download the Olympic Puzzles.

Another quick way to include the Olympics in your day, is by recording any medals that your country has won, by keeping a tally sheet.

The Winter Olympics in Sochi has an official website; click on the link and it will take you to a list of countries who have won medals, and how many of each kind they have won.

I've included a recording sheet for the United States, as well as a generic one that can be used by any other country. (A friendly shout out to my frequent visitors from Canada, England, Australia, Germany and China, who are the top 5 countries that visit often, as well as 67 other countries!) Click on the link to view/download the Olympic Medal Tally Sheets.

While doing research about the Olympics on the web, I found a very helpful site "Winter Olympics Through The Years." It has some great background information, as well as a ton of info from the 1924 Olympics through the current Winter Olympics. Click on the link to check it out.

olympic puzzles, olympic activities for kids, olympic crafts, olympic games for kids, olympic centers, olympic snacks, olympic alphabet cards, recording sheet for medals, olympic venn diagrams olympic number cards, Since most of your students will have seen some winter as well as summer Olympic activities, why not have them do an Olympic Venn diagram? I've designed 6 for your students to choose from. Venn diagrams are a quick and easy way for students to compare and contrast something. Click on the link to view/download the Olympic Venn Diagram packet.

olympic puzzles, olympic activities for kids, olympic crafts, olympic games for kids, olympic centers, olympic snacks, olympic alphabet cards, recording sheet for medals, olympic venn diagrams olympic number cards, I thought a list of all of the Winter Olympic sports, as well as a list of Summer Olympic Competitions would be helpful. Students can look up a sport and write a factual report, or they can add these to a sports dictionary and define each one, or simply use the lists to make crossword puzzles and word searches.

olympic puzzles, olympic activities for kids, olympic crafts, olympic games for kids, olympic centers, olympic snacks, olympic alphabet cards, recording sheet for medals, olympic venn diagrams olympic number cards, I've included a sport reporting page as well as a cover for a sports dictionary if you choose those options. Click on the link for the Winter & Summer Olympics Sports Packet.

Another easy idea is to have a few quick activities available "just for fun."

Use them for those early finishers, or tuck them in your sub folder. Click on the link to grab the connect the dot Olympic Rings.

olympic puzzles, olympic activities for kids, olympic crafts, olympic games for kids, olympic centers, olympic snacks, olympic alphabet cards, recording sheet for medals, olympic venn diagrams olympic number cards, For a quick Olympic art center, have students make their version of Rachel Whiteread's 2012 London Olympics poster. Spill the 5 Olympic colors onto small paper plates. Using an empty toilet paper tube (one for each color) students dip and press, making colorful circles all over their paper 'til they are satisfied with their design.

Besides activities that feed the mind, I always had some sort of special snack that related to the interesting things that we were studying.

olympic puzzles, olympic activities for kids, olympic crafts, olympic games for kids, olympic centers, olympic snacks, olympic alphabet cards, recording sheet for medals, olympic venn diagrams olympic number cards, I had some extremely creative parents every year, that were more than willing to whip together whatever crazy thing I discovered on the web. Their delicious edibles saved me time and money, and really added to our celebrations.

If you do that sort of thing too, I found these yummy Olympic sugar cookie rings over at The Decorated Cookie. Click on the link to pop on over.

olympic puzzles, olympic activities for kids, olympic crafts, olympic games for kids, olympic centers, olympic snacks, olympic alphabet cards, recording sheet for medals, olympic venn diagrams olympic number cards, Another easy Olympic snack idea are these cute "torches." Simply fill sugar cones with popcorn.

These neat treats were created by Kami. Click on the link to check out her blog article.

olympic puzzles, olympic activities for kids, olympic crafts, olympic games for kids, olympic centers, olympic snacks, olympic alphabet cards, recording sheet for medals, olympic venn diagrams olympic number cards, I have a lot more Olympic FREEBIES to share, (pop by tomorrow) but I don't want this to get too long. Thanks for visiting. Feel free to PIN away.