olympics

Luge riders... what a scary fast sport. 

Most of the work on the Olympic lap book is done by Jack but we have all worked on it together, from colouring, cutting, researching, cheering for and watching olympic coverage on TV to trying out sports that are new to us, exciting and dangerous.  We had much help from the resources found on the side bar under olympic unit theme. It is amazing to find such awesome helps on-line. It is also the first time we have done a lap book together, the boys did one at co-op last year about the rain forest but I was otherwise engaged singing pre-school finger songs... this is all new to me (not unlike scrapbooking though) fun.



We read lots about ancient greece in preparation also. One of the books we really enjoyed was The Greek News made to read like a newspaper, it covers (lightly) lots of the everyday lives of ancient Greeks in the 800b.c.-300b.c. era. (It even had an article about homeschooling vs. formal schooling for boys - girls were homeschooled exclusively...)



It gave us ideas for some crafts.

- Olive leaf wreaths to crown the olympic winners.
- Greek style jars with painted figures depicting our favourite modern day olympic sports.
- Designing our own symbols (depicting our qualities and characteristics) Zeus is represented with a lightning bolt and an eagle.
- Jack also felted an eagle and the boys made a model of Mt. Olympus out of cups.
- of course a podium and medals for the stuffies as well.


(doesn't Mt. Olympus look majestic in the morning sun light?)

One aspect of the lap book is to learn a little about each of the sports. We found this neat video showing how a curling stone is made, which answered all our questions about curling. (not exactly what the purpose of it is... but a nice appreciation for the stones....)



Some of the other activities that have made this unit interesting, have been trips to the library to find books about winter sports. We are keeping a log of what we read during the olympics as well as making personal goals in other areas, like math for the month of February. We are hoping to reach gold in achieving those goals. Video games with an Olympic winter games theme; keeping track of medals earned in the Olympics and researching deeper our favourite Canadian Athletes. 

We have read a bit in the bible about the olympic too, which is pretty cool.