Olympic Week Activities

The last week of February was a blast! We topic was toddler versions of "Olympic" winter sports and games. Our events included:

Hockey on our playground, one of our parents shared a hockey set with the class for the week.

Mountain Climbing, we stacked our classroom pillows under our futon couch mattress to make a mountain. We then covered it with a white cloth. They enjoyed climbing up, running/rolling and jumping on it. It was great for large motor skills development and expending a lot of energy!!!

"Ice" Skating around our classroom, we rolled up the large area rub in our classroom, took off our shoes and "skated" around the classroom. It helped that our floor had just recently been shined :D After watching a real ice skater on our classroom computer, the children joined me on our own "ice" floor.

Box sledding, we attached ropes to a medium sized box and took turns pulling and riding in the box. It was a great workout for the children pushing and pulling the box! :D It was also a great way to teach teamwork to the children, especially when one tried to go one way and another the other way.

Animals on Ice, I froze a large sheet of ice then placed it in our sensory table. I added a few animals into the table and let the children slide the animals across the ice.

As with all topics of interest, I love to incorporate art in our learning experiences. Some of our art projects included:

Team t-shirt, each child painted olympic colors onto their shirts. They then decorated it with glitter.

Ice cube painting, I froze different colored water color in an ice tray. Once frozen, the children used the cubes to paint white construction paper. The colors first looked really dark when wet, but as they dried, the colors were vibrant!

Gold medal art, instead of just giving them pre-made medals, we thought it would be more fun if the children participated in the making of their medals. They painted a precut card stock with yellow paint and gold shimmering water color. Once dried, we added the ribbon.

Olympic Rings coloring, was a fun activity for the children and a great way to develop fine motor skills.

On the last day of the week, we held a medal ceremony for the children. They each received their medal and took an olympic style picture next to our classroom banner. It was a lot of fun and the parents loved the photo documentation we kept of the week's events!