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.

Growing Up Ladybug and How to Become a Butterfly are both by Stepanka Sekaninova and illustrated by Linh Dao, and they came out at the same time and are on similar themes, so let’s look at them together.

Growing Up Ladybug is narrated by Mariella, a seven-spot ladybug. She talks about the parts of a ladybug, where they live, different kinds of ladybugs, why humans love them, their defenses against predators and the life cycle of a ladybug.

The drawings are cute if not always scientifically accurate, it’s not in such a way that’s likely to confuse kids (who probably already know that ladybug mamas don’t push their larval babies around in strollers, for instance.

It’s a good general description of the life cycle of a lady bug and why we like having them around.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Albatross Media. Suggested retail price $16.95.

Similarly, How to Become a Butterfly covers the life cycle of a butterfly, starting with caterpillars eating burning nettle leaves. (Here Amanda is the narrator.) The book talks about a few of the more than 18,000 daytime butterflies in the world as well as other creatures that live in the meadow (there’s that ladybug again, along with crickets, bees and other bugs).

It also covers some of the enemies of caterpillars like wasps and spiders, and the defenses that caterpillars use to try to prevent being eaten. It illustrates how caterpillars grow and change as they molt and prepare to pupate, and what a caterpillar looks like before and while it is forming its chrysalis. And while the book uses the word metamorphasis it doesn’t really talk about what happens between the caterpillar forming a chrysalis and the butterfly hatching.

This butterfly is a peacock butterfly, and once it hatches the book covers the parts of a butterfly and the life cycle. It also talks about nocturnal moths (though it says nocturnal butterflies are “usually called moths” when moths are actually a different species) and what butterflies do at night.

I’m maybe a little hard on this book because my daughter is a butterfly expert from way back, but it is still cute and good for the very basic basics of the butterfly life cycle.

Both books would be fun additions to your bookshelf for younger kids starting to learn about different animals or who have an interest in insects.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Albatross Media. Suggested retail price $16.95.

Have you read?

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