Olympic Activity Ideas!

The 2016 Olympic Games are now in full swing in Rio and GB are set to have their best away games yet!

If you are thinking of ways to incorporate the Olympics in to your classroom, we’veput together a few ideas to help you inspire your pupils and take advantage of the learning opportunities the Games present.

Geography

• Use a world map to plot the host nations for the modern Olympics, which started in 1896.
• Plan a viewing programme of Olympic events around Brazil and plan the routes to get there.
• Divide the class or school into groups and allocate each one a country that is participating in the Olympics. They should find out as much as they can about their country, its geography, history and culture and create a report, which they present to the class or school, possibly in the form of a documentary or as a tourist information publication.
• Work out which team has to travel the furthest to get to Rio.
• Allocate each child a participating country and ask them to locate it on a world map. Then ask the class to group themselves as if on a world map, initially just in the correct continents. As a further challenge they could try to position themselves correctly in relation to each other – you might need to go outside or use the hall for this one!
• Learn some basic phrases from competing nations. These could include: Hello, Goodbye, Please, Thank You, Yes, No. Make a poster to help you learn them.

Science

• Record pulse rates before and after participating in different types of sport. Can you devise a fair test? Is one type of sport better for you than another? What criteria would you use?
• All sports people use certain muscles to perform their sport to the best of their ability. Committed sports people train hard every day, eat balanced diets and generally look after themselves. Investigate how muscles work in the body.

English

• Creative writing – write a mystery story set around the Olympics in Rio. It could involve competitors or spectators, or both, and it should include at least one description of an Olympic event.
• Write a sports report, either for a real or imaginary event.
• Choose one of the ancient Olympic events and write a description of it for someone who has never seen it. Imagine you are in the crowd and writing home to your tell your family about your adventure to this Ancient Olympics (think about sights, smells, sounds etc)
• Using our own national anthem, write some alternative lyrics to give it a sporting theme.

Art & Design

• Design a flag and athletics kit for an imaginary country.
• Design a logo or a poster to promote sport in school.
• Design a training shoe for a chosen sport. Explain how your design would help the athlete to improve their performance.
• Design a poster to promote Olympic values in your school.
• Make an Olympic torch – cut the bottom off a plastic bottle, cover the bottle with foil and add red, yellow and orange tissue-paper flames.
• Design your own set of Olympic medals – gold, silver and bronze. What would you show on either side of each medal.

Maths

• Create a database of current world and Olympic records in all the Olympic sports.
• Look at distances, heights and lengths and times of some of the Olympic records. Use this information to set simple calculations such as:

What is the total length of all the ‘throwing’ events?

What is the difference between the men’s marathon winner and the women’s?

If all the jumping events were added together (both height and length) what distance would be covered?

How much further is the men’s compared to the women’s result?

How fast on average were each of the relay runners running?

If you add together all the distance track events for either the men or women, how many laps round the stadium would these amount to? (The stadium track is 400m once round).

The Olympics is also a great opportunity to highlight the Olympic values of excellence, friendship and respect. The official Olympic website offers lots of information about the history of the Games plus current sports and athletes.