- respect – fair play; knowing one’s own limits; and taking care of one’s health and the environment
- excellence – how to give the best of oneself, on the field of play or in life; taking part; and progressing according to one’s own objectives
- friendship – how, through sport, to understand each other despite any differences The more I read them over the more I realized that I thought they would be great to break down into tasks and ideas that JDaniel could work on. Over the course of the next three week I am going to share how I made each of the areas of the Olympic Values apply to his four year old life.
This week we are going to look at respect.
Respect
He needs to understand that he needs display fair play when play with others. That means taking turns with toys and who has to been it when we are playing tag.
When you choose to stamp your feet and screech about friends not being fair or your parents not being fair, you are demanding people respect you. In many cases it doesn’t end up getting you the respect you want.
By helping JDaniel to slow down and think about how his decision to be fair or not with his friends really effects him, I am hoping he will made choices that are fair for everyone.
Knowing One’s Own Limits
I think it is important for know what you have the ability to do at a given time. I don’t think it means that you don’t try to improve on your ability. It does mean not pushing your body is able and ready to do.
JDaniel loves to climb trees. He has mastered climbing up trees. Climbing down trees has yet to be mastered. He hasn’t learned to look back to gage here is foot needs go or figure out how far down he needs to lower his foot. He tends to dangle his foot down and hope it lands on something. JDaniel’s shoes get stuck where a branch joins a tree and he ends up calling out for me or leaving the shoe behind.
That doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be climbing trees. It does mean he shouldn’t go too high up in a tree that he can’t be rescued. It does mean that he need to learn where to put his feet when he is climbing down. Finally it does mean that he needs to work at mastering those skills before he moves forward.
Taking Care of Ones Health and Environment
I can teach him that is means taking care of yourself to the best of your ability and the world around him.
Simple things like helping to brush your own teeth and helping to bathe yourself are things that my four year old can do.
He can also help keep our home environment clean by helping with cleaning chores and putting away his toys. By giving him a dust cloth to help me clean or time to use the vacuum cleaner with my supervision helps him be apart of keeping his home environment nice.
- Put his dirty clothes in the hamper.
- Dry his hands and put towel in the hamper if it is too dirty after hand washing.
- Put his dirty dishes on the counter by the sink.
- Let me know if a toy becomes broken so, we can try to repair it.
- Beyond our home environment JDaniel can help with putting things in the recycling bin and helping put things into the trash to help keep our yard neat. We are working on trying to carry the idea of recycling and taking care of trash we create and find into parks and other places we visit.
Next week I will focus on the Olympic Value of excellence.
I like the example of the tree. Sometimes I get so caught up in wanting to protect my two that if they get ‘stuck’ I want to say, Okay, no more climbing trees’ or whatever else it is. I know they need to do that climbing for growth.
I had no idea about these Olympic values, but I love them. What I great idea to carry them into lessons with JDaniel.
I love that you are using the Olympics to teach values!
What a great way to use the media to teach your son!
These are great values and all kids can benefit from learning them.
I havent heard of these being olympic values before but i think they are great and can apply to everyone!
I love how you weaved a value/lesson to something fun like the Olympics. We briefly touched on some of those values in our backyard Olympic challenge we had last weekend (I just posted it) but I had no idea they actually had Olympic Values. Thanks for sharing.
Love love how much you are using the Olympics for teaching and fun ideas. I had never heard the values before- so cool
What a wonderful post and what a great way to “explore” the Olympics. Fabulous.
PS in terms of how I teach respect.. I try to lead by example… show them how I respect others including themselves and also point out to them irrespectful behaviour.
Great ideas! Fun way to make the Olympics a personal thing…and a new way to teach some of the things we as parents feel like we repeat over and over. Thanks for stopping by my blog!
Great idea! I just started working w/ Pierce on putting away his own laundry.
Awesome! We have had fun watching the Olympic trial highlights on demand. My son loves doing chores right now. Part of it is because he earns money for himself and his savings account, but part of it is that he still has fun doing them. I am enjoying my willing laundry helper since I know that it won’t be long until he realizes housework truly is work!
what a great post. I’d never heard of them either, I’ve learned something new. Thanks
Absolutely LOVE this. I had not heard of these, but I can’t wait to implement them into our Olympic Celebrations. Thank you so much for sharing!
Oh I love this! Great lessons and well written. Pinning to spread the word!
This is phenomenal…what a great post / so thoughtfully written out! Love it 🙂
This is FANTASTIC!! I didn’t know about these Olympic Values either. What a way to teach our children some amazing things to go along with the games.
what a great post! i am so ready for the Olympics! actually, i met a girl… (i was visiting Seattle with a friend and it was her cousin…) that is going to be IN THE OLYMPICS!!!! SO EXCITED!
I love how you broke down Olympic values to make them relevant to a 4 year old. Job well done!
I had never heard of the Olympic values either! This is definitely something I need to work on with Peanut – Respect. I love all the ways J.Daniel can work towards it.
What a great idea for an Olympic series. I like all of your ideas for increasing respect too.
Hey visiting from SITS…great examples for the Olympics! I’m a new follower…find me over at http://www.theredheadedprincess.com
I love the way you are teaching J.Daniel these values.
I’d also never heard of these value – thank you for telling us about them!
You are so creative in teaching your boy. Well done!
=)
This is the first I have heard of the Olympic Values. All parents and grandparents should take the time to instill these values in out children and grandchildren.
marcia.goss@gmail.com
Great idea! I would love to have you link this up to my linky party! http://domesticrandomness.blogspot.com/2012/08/friday-fascinations-2-olympics-linky.html
This is a wonderful series! By far the best olympics lesson I can think of sharing with my preschooler. Thank you so much for sharing.