Learning Activities around the Olympics

July 21, 2016 by Sarah White Leave a Comment

The Olympic Games are starting Aug. 5, so it’s the perfect time to bring some Olympic-themed learning and play into your classroom or home.

Edventures with Kids hosted a great Olympics activity roundup earlier this summer that includes geography, STEM activities, learning about Brazil and books about the Olympics. There’s even an activity sheet kids can use to collect points when they do different activities to earn “medals.”

3 Dinosaurs has an Olympics pack of printables for use with kids ages 2 to 7. It includes cutting and writing practice, dot marker pages, counting, puzzles and more, all with a summer Olympics theme. And if you have a preschooler you’ll love these Olympics activities from Parenting from the Heart.

There’s another great roundup of Olympics activities from around the web at the Chaos and the Clutter. You’ll especially want to check out her ideas for hosting your own backyard Olympics. Also look at I Can Teach My Child for a DIY Olympic torch, an Olympic ring pretzel craft/snack and more.

Use basic LEGO bricks to make the Olympic rings, with instructions from Little Bins for Little Hands. Or paint rocks with the national flags of participating countries, which you can see at Non-Toy Gifts.

After all that playful learning your kid deserves a medal, so why not make gold, silver and bronze playdough with a little help from metallic crayons? The instructions are at Sugar Aunts.

Are you excited about the Olympics? What’s your favorite event? I think my daughter will love watching gymnastics.

[Photo via Edventures with Kids.]

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Games to Make with LEGO Bricks

When my daughter was younger she had a ton of LEGO bricks, and I’m honestly a little sad we got rid of most of them because there are so many fun things to do with LEGOs outside of the kits you bought them in.

I love seeing all the ideas people have for LEGO building challenges, and I have shared some ideas for LEGO games before, but I saw one on Pinterest the other day that I felt was worth a mention.

This one is for those ’80s and ’90s kids who spent sick days home from school watching “The Price is Right”: LEGO Plinko!

For those who don’t know about Plinko, the original was a giant peg board set up at an angle and the contestant would drop a flat disc at the top of the board. As it moved down the board it would hit the pegs and change the way it moved, and there would be different prizes in the slots at the bottom where the piece would land.

This version from Play Party Game works on the same principle, using LEGO bricks to make the game board and marbles in place of the Plinko disc since your game board isn’t flat.

You can really use whatever bricks you have for this build, and while it shows all the pegs the same size and evenly spaced, you can play with different configurations and see what happens. It’s engineering and a game!

And while you’re playing with your LEGOs, make sure to check out this post from Kids Craft Room that includes minute to win it style games you can do with LEGO. From speed sorting to tower building as fast as you can, these ideas are sure to get you thinking about different ways to play with LEGO.

And if you need even more ideas, check out my post with LEGO building challenges you can print out for kids (and adults!) to try.

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