I decided to plan one small lesson for each weekday the Olympics are on. Some days are a little more in depth than others, but for the most part, I decided to keep it short and sweet, because this is Turkey and Bunny’s first school experience, and because it was hard to find stuff (especially about China) that wouldn’t go right over the heads of four and five year olds! The Olympics starting on a Friday is a little awkward, since we’ll only have one day of “lessons” before the weekend, but nothing like easing into something slowly, right?
One thing I’m doing that I’m really excited about is events pictograms. I printed off the official pictogram for each event, and I’ve put them in groups of five, so for seven days (I think that’s right) we’ll have a brief overview of five sports. I’m going to try to coordinate at least some of the big events with the days they’ll be on, but we’ll have to see how that works out.
I picked 1 Corinthians 9:24 (“Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it.” Oh, and they’ve already asked what the verse is, since I wrote it on our poster board in the school room, and also already asked what it means–I think I’m in trouble!) for our memory verse for the week (well, technically two weeks, I guess). So, the Friday of the Opening Ceremonies, I’ll introduce that. We’ll then review it every day, and hopefully they’ll be able to memorize it…it’s not the shortest verse, but it’s not too long, either. We may also have a “family olympics” but I haven’t figured out what that will involve yet.
The rest of the Olympics will go as follows:
August 8–Learn the Olympic Motto and Olympic Oath, and what they mean.
August 11–Map the torch relay, color a picture of the torch.
August 12–Learn about Chinese numbers one through ten, practice writing them.
August 12–Color the Chinese flag, learn some basic facts about the country (population, size, etc.), go over the first set of events pictograms.
August 13–Color the Olympic flag, learn what the rings stand for and why they’re the colors they are, second set of pictograms.
August 15–Learn about the first Olympic mascot, and what it teaches us about China, color a mascot picture, third set of pictograms.
August 18–Second mascot, fourth set of pictograms.
August 19–Third mascot, fifth set of pictograms.
August 20–Fourth mascot, sixth set of pictograms.
August 21–Fifth mascot, seventh set of pictograms.
August 22–(Last weekday of the Olympics) Learn how to write our names in Chinese, make gold medals.
I know the “lessons” are pretty short, but it’s mostly for fun–we’re not even starting our school year until the Tuesday after Labor Day! I hope I’ve planned appropriate things for their age levels… will they come away having learned something? I sure hope so, because I had a blast planning it!