Celebrate the Winter Olympics with Kids

As I write this its just about time for the Winter Olympics in Milan/Cortina to begin, so let’s celebrate with some learning activities.

First, a couple of fun facts. This is the fourth time Italy has hosted the Olympics, and the third time it’s hosted winter games. There will be 116 medal events in 16 disciplines, with new medal events including men’s and women’s dual moguls in freestyle skiing, men’s and women’s double in luge (which had existed before but was replaced with a doubles event), men’s and women’s team alpine combined, women’s large hill and individual ski jumping and mixed relay in skeleton.

Also new this year is ski mountaineering, which involves climbing a mountain either on skis or while carrying them and then skiing back down. This Olympic Games has the highest participation of female athletes ever in a winter games, at 47 percent. And for the first time since 2014, the National Hockey League is on a break during the Games so players can participate.

Check out these other Olympic themed articles across our blog.

13 Olympic Crafts for Kids

A STEM Relay Race with a Olympics Twist [Lesson Plans]

Host Your Own Mini Olympics In The Back Yard [Kids Crafts]

It would be fun to learn about Italy or different winter sports found in the Olympics if you like. (That page has explainers for the different sports if there are some you’ve never heard of.

One thing that kids will probably like having to do with the Olympics is checking the medal counts and seeing which country is ahead. This is a great math and charting activity to do with kids of any age. Teach Beside Me has a printable medal tracker you can add the countries to and count the number of gold, sliver and bronze medals they earn.

Create Craft Love has printables specific to the US and Canada, as well as a blank one you can add the country to, where you can color in the number of medals won and count them.

Kids Art & Craft has a nice collection of Olympic themed crafts, including a couple of different DIY medals, Olympic ring art, painted flag rocks and more. I feel like I’ve shared this one for some previous games but I love the simple paper plate ring craft from Meaningful Mama shown here.

3 Dinosaurs has a huge collection of sports and Olympic themed printables and activities that includes both winter and summer sports. And The Price Adventure has some printable activities including Olympic rings to decorate and trace, a medal to design and a flag to decorate.

If you’re looking for more ideas of things to do in the classroom, check out this list of Olympics lesson plan ideas from Homeschool Superfreak.

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Free Black History Month Coloring Sheets and…

Shark Week generally happens in July, but any time is a good time to learn more about sharks.

First, start with some fun whale facts like these from Kids Craft Room. Here I learned about the dwarf lantern shark, which is the smallest shark and only grows to about 6-8 inches (about 15-20 cm) long. It also emits light. How cool is that?

Natural Beach Living has some great printable shark information guides, where kids can learn about different kinds of sharks, match the facts to the pictures, or print out doubles and do a shark memory game.

Living Life an Learning has some great shark activity pages including the parts of a shark, types of sharks, a crossword puzzle and more. Also check out their parts of a shark and word scramble download, and a life cycle worksheet.

Learn about how sharks float with this great activity from JDaniel4’s Mom.

Need more facts about sharks? This fact pact from The WOLFe PACK on Teacher Pay Teachers includes fact sheets, a printable flip book, informational text, vocabulary, comprehension questions and more.

Living Montessori Now has a great collection of shark themed activities with a Montessori inspired twist. You’ll find a shark roll and cover, shark phonics and lots more shark activities Deb has collected from all over the Internet.

Remember the “Sharknado” movie? A Few Shortcuts turned the combination of sharks and tornadoes into a fun science activity. You’ll need a bottle connector for this project but otherwise should have everything you need on hand. Use their template to make your sharks out of aluminum foil. So fun!

You can also do some shark themed coloring with these coloring pages from Encouraging Moms at Home. Or make a cool 3D shark with this template from korkotak. And there are tons of different shark crafts collected in this post from Kids Activities Blog.

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