This year the Olympics are being held in Beijing, China on August 8 to 24 2008. This is an excellent opportunity to use current events in your programming. Our centre likes to use this opportunity to experience foods from other countries, learn new national anthems and color flags from around the world in addition to practicing Olympic sports, having our own opening and closing ceremonies, practicing team work and keeping track of how our favorite countries are doing in the medal count. This theme is large enough to be carried out over the entire two weeks of the Olympics if desired, as well as a prep week before hand learning about the host country.
Opening Ceremonies
On Monday morning our daycare will be split into three groups. Each group will create their own banner/flag and a chant to present during our opening ceremonies. We will discuss the Olympic flame and its journey to the Olympic Games. During craft time we will create our own Olympic flames by covering a paper towel roll with aluminum foil and gluing orange/red/yellow tissue paper at the top. During outdoor time we will parade around our playground and “light” a cauldron to represent our own Olympic flame and kick off our Olympic theme.
Many newspapers have programs that will deliver papers for free to classrooms studying the Olympics. This year we will be using the Toronto Sun. We will be creating a large tally sheet in the front hall. Every morning during circle we will discuss any events we watched the night before and whether or not Canada won any medals. Even the toddlers and preschoolers can participate in counting the number of Gold/Silver/Bronze medals we have gotten during the 2 weeks we keep track. We will also take this opportunity to practice our National Anthem in preparation for those of our preschool friends moving on to kindergarten next year.
Activites
Our drama activity will be puppets made to represent the Fuwa; the mascots for the Olympics. Their names are Beibei, Jingjing, Huanhuan, Yingying, and Nini. They look like dolls and each represents a colour of one of the Olympic rings. Our lunch menu will highlight foods from around the world. Chinese, Mexican, Italian, Canadian, England are our choices for the week. Craft ideas are endless.
You can make torches, Olympic flags, flags from various countries, medals, Olympic headbands, the kids can create their own mascots, or draw one of the Olympic mascots. You can extend the theme to include Chinese themes as well and create Chinese lanterns, and dragons. They can even dabble in some Chinese lettering. Cognitive activities can include matching the flags to the country (or even just matching flags for the younger set), learning Chinese words and phrases, matching the sport to the sporting equipment used etc.
Sports
Friday will be our huge outdoor sports day. We have tons of activities planned, water sports, track and field and gymnastics. The kids will have a chance to practice long jump, standing long jump and triple jump, running and relay races, an obstacle course, gymnastics floor routines, ribbon & hula hoop routines, a waterless swim meet (Alf Grigg introduced this idea at one of his seminars, it is always a hit and the kids love it! All you need is space, kids, imagination and masking tape to create your “pool”.) Some of our water games include a water balloon toss, filling a bucket using cups with holes, and a sponge toss.
I've used something like this before with a school age program, and it was a big hit. I'm excited to see how the younger group takes to the theme.