Unschooling the Olympic games
We started our day snuggled on the couch watching a lot of the Olympic games that we've been recording on the DVR. We enjoyed watching several different sports but I think the boys enjoyed the snowboard freestyle the most.
We talked about how easy the athletes can make it seem and how much work and dedication it takes to be the best in your sport. Many athletes compete while sick or injured and have to find a way to persevere since the games don't wait for them to heal. We discussed if we thought it was wise to compete while injured or not.
I decided to go with the boys Olympic enthusiasm today and once we finished watching the Olympics we had a fun time trying out some of the Olympic events through our Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter games games on our Wii. The boys took turns playing different events and even switched over for a while to our summer games game. Ian didn't really want to play Wii much so he played with some Lego sets in his room and just took a turn here and there.
Since we spent all morning pursuing our own interests and everyone wanted school over with very quickly we did resort back to worksheets for a quick afternoon lesson. The older two boys had a word search of Olympic terms, a roll, multiply and color sheet and a multiplication minute test. Evan worked on matching the Olympic sport with the picture (a fun way to get some reading practice in!) and a roll, add and color.
Once they finished up their work we read Olympics!, The Littlest Matryoshka, and Rechenka's Eggs. They all asked to go play after that and spent the entire afternoon upstairs playing together. They played with their Lego sets, traded stuffed animals, and made up all sorts of wonderful games using their imaginations.
We love studying the Olympics because we're learning so much:
We talked about how easy the athletes can make it seem and how much work and dedication it takes to be the best in your sport. Many athletes compete while sick or injured and have to find a way to persevere since the games don't wait for them to heal. We discussed if we thought it was wise to compete while injured or not.
I decided to go with the boys Olympic enthusiasm today and once we finished watching the Olympics we had a fun time trying out some of the Olympic events through our Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter games games on our Wii. The boys took turns playing different events and even switched over for a while to our summer games game. Ian didn't really want to play Wii much so he played with some Lego sets in his room and just took a turn here and there.
Since we spent all morning pursuing our own interests and everyone wanted school over with very quickly we did resort back to worksheets for a quick afternoon lesson. The older two boys had a word search of Olympic terms, a roll, multiply and color sheet and a multiplication minute test. Evan worked on matching the Olympic sport with the picture (a fun way to get some reading practice in!) and a roll, add and color.
Once they finished up their work we read Olympics!, The Littlest Matryoshka, and Rechenka's Eggs. They all asked to go play after that and spent the entire afternoon upstairs playing together. They played with their Lego sets, traded stuffed animals, and made up all sorts of wonderful games using their imaginations.
We love studying the Olympics because we're learning so much:
- The names of the various countries and their flags
- The names and rules of many new sports
- The history and the culture of the region hosting the Olympics
- The history of past Olympic games
- Good sportsmanship
- Hard work and dedication
- Overcoming adversity
- We're reading all sorts of wonderful books about the Olympics for some great reading practice
- We're learning tally marks; keeping track of the amounts of medals our favorite countries are earning
- It's history in the making!
- We've learned many new vocabulary words
- We've tried many new food dishes in honor of the various countries we've watched
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