Teaching Olympics to Kindegarteners

Two years ago, I decided the best way to teach my kids (1 and 4) to appreciate the Olympics was to have a mock Olympics in our backyard with our friends. We began with a torch relay across the yard, held appropriate events (i.e., the running while making swimming motion w/ your arms relay) , and had a medal ceremony. Being in a University town, we have a very international population, so we put a flag of the country each child's parents (or in some cases they) were born to show how international the games are. We sang the National Anthem during the medal ceremony and followed with a Greek pot luck.

I wanted to do something similar this year to celebrate the Winter Olympics in Italy. I didn't have time to do something over the weekend, so I approached Sarah's kindergarten teacher about doing a multi-week unit about Italy and the Olympics. Thankfully she was in agreement.

We are doing this in 2 class sessions.

One week we will learn about the Olympics (I'm trying to video tape events to show in class) and Italy and if we have time make a no-cook Italian dish (pasta so the kids cook it at home? tiramisu? ANY OTHER SUGGESTIONS WELCOME!).

One week we will have a torch relay from the classroom to the "site" of the games (we are hoping the gym teacher will let us use the already scheduled gym class for this event). I was thinking about games such as:

a ski race using traffic cones to create the flags
a speed skating race with sock feet
floor hockey if the school has the equipment
maybe the luge or skeleton if they have flat things w/ wheels

Then we will have a medal ceremony. We have already asked parents to let us know if they or their kids were born outside of the US so I can make the medals international again.

I can't wait! Neither can Sarah.

I'm so grateful Sarah's teacher is open to parents taking over her class.