Friday, August 8, 2008

Preschool Olympic Ideas - Opening Ceremony

Hi there,

Today is quite an exciting day - 08/08/08 - Opening Day of the Olympics in Beijing China!

This is a perfect time to talk about the Olympics and how important they are to everyone worldwide.

Children love ceremonies and parades and I suggest you try the following ideas to introduce these games and the tradition of the TORCH.

Introduce the concept of the Olympic torch, the importance of the torch run, how it always starts in Greece, etc. Show videos from previous Olympic opening ceremonies including the lighting of the torch.

Craft- Making Torches

Materials- paper towel rolls, tissue paper (red, yellow and orange), paint, glue, markers, foil, wrapping paper

Give each child one paper towel roll and a few pieces of tissue paper. Have them rip or cut the tissue paper into long strips and glue the strips inside one edge of the paper towel roll. Decorate the tube by either painting it or covering it with foil or wrapping paper.

Opening Ceremonies - using the torches from the craft to perform a torch relay run throughout the school or schoolyard. Put all the torches together in the same place to mark the opening of the Games.


Let me know how you like the ideas and also send me yours to share on the blog.

You can reach me at marys.plans@gmail.com

Until next time,

Mary

P.S. If you like these ideas be sure to check out my Preschool Lesson Plans:

http://www.preschoolplanner.com/thefullstory.html

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1 comment:

Unknown said...

I'm sharing a two week Olympic program with another co worker to make torches, flags and medals. We will be using the flags during our "opening cermony" before we have the mini olympics with running races, egg and spoon races, horse races, high jump (on very very low beam) and long jump. Then using the flags in closing ceremony too! We are also having a "green and gold" day as we are in Australia.