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.

I did a post earlier this year with activities and ideas for teaching the alphabet, but a lot or learning letters and recognizing them just has to do with seeing them and working with them a lot.

That means coloring, tracing, identifying things that start with different letters and more.

One way to reinforce the letters is through little activity books like these cute printable alphabet books from Life Over Cs.

These are available for free when you subscribe to her newsletter, and I’d say that’s well worth it if you have a little one (or a group of little ones!) working on the alphabet and letter recognition.

Each mini book includes a collection of things that start with that letter to color, color and read with words that start with the letter, tracing the letter, finding the letter in a grid and other coloring pages with objects that start with that letter.

These little books are super useful reinforcing the different letters and giving kids different activities related to the letters.

If you do a letter of the day or letter of the week you can use a new book for each one, and then keep the copies in your reading center or in a basket where kids can look at them again.

And of course you can add in all the other letter activities you like, go on a scavenger hunt for items that start with that letter, read alphabet books, practice writing letters in rice or with pompoms or playdough or whatever sensory activities you like.

You can grab the free printables when you enter you email address at Life Over Cs, and check out her other great alphabet resources and activities while you are over there.

Do you have favorite activities for teaching letters to kids? I’d love to hear about them!

[Photo: Life Over Cs]

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