Olympic Archives - JDaniel4s Mom

Code and Color Olympic Water Sports Themed Algorithm Pages

July 27, 2024 By Deirdre

This set will be perfect for celebrating Olympic water sports or just want to have a water-themed learning week. This set features swimming, synchronized swimming, canoeing, and diving.

There are two versions of each page. One features assigned colors and the other is a choose your colors. You can decide which sports you want to explore and how you want your children to explore them.

The directions on each of the pages are displayed on Blockly coding blocks. The pages can be used to introduce children to Blockly coding before they work with them online. Young children can learn about coding offline before they start coding online.

Getting the Code and Color Olympic Water Sports Pages

First, you will need to download it.

Code and Color Olympic Water Sports Algorithm Coloring Pages Download

Then you will need to open the set with Acrobat Reader.

Next, you decide which coloring page you want your children to work on.

Once you have printed out the coloring page, you gather crayons for your children to color their pages.

Exploring the Code and Color Algorithm Pages

You will want to walk your children through the algorithm steps on the left-hand side of the worksheet before they start coloring.
Reviewing the sport and how it is played is a good idea.
Then you will need to remind them that completing an algorithm is a step-by-step process. They will need to add one element or color at a time.

Code and Color Olympic Medal Algorithm Pages

Decorating an Umbrella Based on an Algorithm

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish Algorithm Page

Bike Safety Code and Color Pages

Static Electricity Olympic Flame Experiment

July 11, 2016 By Deirdre

We just love doing science experiments. This summer we have made a water wheel, ocean waves in a bottle, and a shot put catapult. A few years ago we did a static electricity experiment that used tissue paper and a balloon to make a butterflies wings flap. With the Olympics coming up later this summer I thought it would be fun to repeat the static electricity experiment with an Olympic torch and tissue paper flames. Using static electricity to make the flames flicker would be so cool.

Assembling the Static Electricity Tools

Supplies

The link below is an affiliate link.

Cardboard from a cereal box
Colored Tissue Paper (red, yellow, and orange)
Glue stick
Black Marker
Scissors

Putting the Torch Together

We cut the torch handle out of cardboard taken from the side of a cereal box. You can cut out the torch freehand or do what we did. We folded a piece of paper in half and cut the torch shape out of the paper. After unfolding the torch cutout, we traced the shape onto the cardboard. Then we cut the torch out of the cardboard. We then created a black outline along the edge of the torch.

After cutting out a number of flame shaped pieces out of the tissue, we glued one flame onto the torch at a time. We glued the tissue flames in several rows. We tried to alternate between each of the colors. We decided they would look must flame like that way.

Conducting the Static Electricity Experiment

While you can rub a balloon on a piece of wool or on a carpet, we rubber our balloons on our heads. You may want to have your children use several different sources of static electricity while conducting your experiment.

After gathering electricity, the next step is to rub it on the Olympic torch’s flames. The negatively charged surface of the balloon attracts the positively charged flames. This causes the tissue flames to look like they are flickering. It is so cool!

We tried to make the all of the flames move. You may want to try to move one section of the torch at a time. It would be fun to see the flames flicker at one area at a time.

If you like this Olympic themed activity, here are some more activities I think you will like:

Easy Painting Ideas- Gold Medal Painting

Olympic Torch Painting Projects

Fruit Filled Olympic Ring Snack

Elympics – Storybook and Lunch Creation Idea

Olympic Printable Passport

Easy Painting Ideas- Gold Medal Printmaking

June 30, 2016 By Deirdre

Links below are affiliate links.

I have shared over 17 Olympic themed activities with you over the past few years including a shot put catapult and a printable Olympic passport. (You find all of my Olympic activities and wonderful ideas from others on my Olympics Related Ideas board on Pinterest.) We just love the Olympics at my house. Today I want to share with you some easy painting ideas that can be used for gold medal printmaking. They can be used to create a single gold medal or a painted collage of gold medals. We read the book G is for Gold Medal: An Olympics Alphabet before we started gold medal printmaking.

Gold Medal Printmaking

Supplies

Pool Noodle Section (3 inches tall)
X-ACTO Knife
Ribbon (3 inches wide)
Gold or Yellow Paint
White Paper

Creating the Medal Painting Tool

Use the X-ACTO knife to cut two slits parallel to each other on one side of the pool noodle. The slits should be about 1/2 inch to 3/4 off an inch apart. They will need to cut all the way from the outside of the pool noodle into its center. Think about those slit being in the six o’clock section of the pool noodle. Then cut one slit in the nine o’clock section and another in the three o’clock section in the middle of those areas of the pool noodle. These slits need to go all the way through too. These slits will be areas for the ribbon to be slipped through.

Weave one end of the ribbon through the top slit in the six o’clock section and one end through the bottom. Make sure you have an even amount of ribbon on both ends to thread through the side slits.

Easy Painting Ideas

We painted the back of the pool noodle and the ribbon with paintbrush. The pool noodle was painted yellow and the ribbon was painted blue. Then we flipped them both over onto a piece of white paper. You totally don’t have to do that.

Here are some other easy painting ideas:

You can paint the pool noodle gold, silver or bronze to represent each of the medals awarded at the Olympics.

You can create a fun design with paint on the ribbon. Each Olympic host selects a different type of ribbon or chain for their medals.

You can use a variety of brushes or sponges to paint on the ribbon or brush. Sponge brush or sections flat sponges create fun paint effects.

You can create your painted medal on paper. Then add details to the ribbons and medals with markers or crayons.

If you like this craft idea, here are some more Olympic activities you will like:

Olympic Torch Painting Projects

Fruit Filled Olympic Ring Snack

Elympics – Storybook and Lunch Creation Idea

Olympic Printable Passport

Olympic Shot Put Catapult Design

This is part of an Olympic series being hosted by KC Edventures. Please stop by and check out a list of all the activities.

Kids Activities- Olympic Themed Graphs and Charts

January 15, 2014 By Deirdre

I decided to create some kid’s activities with an Olympic theme that feature graphs and charts. Since JDaniel started kindergarten, we have been working more and more with them. They are being emphasized a lot at this school. Providing JDaniel with opportunities to explore them while interacting with some of the sports he will see during the Olympics was my goal for creating this unit. These kid’s activities could be done in at home or in a classroom. If you were doing them at home, you may need to gather data from friends or neighbors for some of them. You could also ask your Facebook friends what they would pick.Let me walk you through each of the Olympic Themed Charts and Diagrams for Kids.

Learning About An Olympic Sport (Lotus Diagram)

olympic_themed_chart_learning_about_an_olympic_sport

Children are invited to select an Olympic sport and describe various aspects of it. If they don’t know much about the sport they selected, they can research it at the library or online. This chart focuses on the basic aspects of a sport. Other circles could be added to cover more specific aspects of the sport.

Olympic Venn Diagram

This kid’s activity asks children to compare and contrast skiing and skating. The center area focuses on the ways that both sports are the same. Skiing and skating are vastly different sports. It may take some higher level thinking to figure out of they are the same.Olympians Can Have Are Chart

This is a new chart for me. I found Can Have Are Charts while searching for charts for kindergartners. Children are asked to brainstorm thing that Olympians can do. Things like march into an area with athletes from around the world, win Olympic medals, and live in dorms with athletes from around the world. Then they are asked to have thing that Olympians have like team uniforms and the chance to win a gold medal. Finally,they are asked to come up with things that Olympians are like the best in their sport.

Olympic Medal Count

Rather than select four countries for children to follow the medal count of our medal count recording chart has the countries blank. Children can select any countries that they would like to follow. Each day of the Olympics they can record the number for bronze, silver and gold medals that those countries have won. They can record each medal with a tally mark or a circle. We will be using tally marks at my house.

Olympic Sport Spin and Graph

The Olympic Sport Spin and Graph allows children to record on a bar graph each time they spin a particular sport. Skating, skiing, bobsledding and hockey are pictured on the spinner.

Children will need a pencil and a paper clip to create a spinner. They simply put the end of paper clip in the center of the spinner. Place a pencil in that end of a paperclip. Push the paper clip with their fingers and watch it spin. The sport it lands on will be recorded on the bar graph.

Favorite Sport Graph

Children can ask friends, neighbors, parent’s Facebook friends what their favorite Olympic sport is and record it on the graph with a circle .

Skiing or Skating Medal Count Chart

There are so many Olympic sports that use skate or skis. Children will need to learn a little about the sports at the Olympic to know whether they use skates or skis. Then they can record whether a country has won a medal or medals in a skiing or skating sport each day.

Would you like the whole collection of Olympic Themed Charts and Graphs ? Just click on Olympic Themed Charts and Graphs link and your will be able to download them for free.

Deirdre Smith writes/owns JDaniel4’s Mom. After twenty years as an elementary school and technology resource teacher in Northern Virginia, she became a stay at home mom in upstate South Carolina. Her blog features ways she and her 5-year-old are exploring learning, crafting, creating healthy meals and living life to its fullest. Deirdre can also be found on twitter as @jdaniel4smom and on her blog’s FB page. You can also check her out on Google+.

Olympics for Kids- 12 Olympic Related Activities and Meals

August 12, 2012 By Deirdre

As you have seen during the last three weeks, I have been a little excited about the Olympics and sharing them with JDaniel. I thought I would share with you all the posts I have written about this Olympics for kids this summer.

Olympics for Kids Activities and Meals

Food Creations

Olympics for Kids- 12 Olympic Related Activities and Meals

The Olympic Symbols were displayed in a bento box in a post called Olympics for Kids: Olympic Symbols Snack.

There was a gold medal meal that featured a fruit strip and cookie gold medal. There was also a cheese popcorn torch in that meal.

As part of a Bento Bloggers Olympic Hop, I shared an Elympic themed bento snack based on the book Elympics.

I shared an edible Olympic torch creation on the Kid’s Activities blog.

There was a Fruit Filled Olympic Ring Breakfast that was a hit with JDaniel.

Finally I created a British Flag Fruit Creation that was filled with fruits I knew would earn a gold medal with JDaniel.

Olympic Values Series

The first post in the series was called Olympic Values: Respect and focused on self respect and knowing one’s limit.

The second post was called Olympic Values: Growing Excellence and was about doing your best.

The final post in the series looks at the Olympic Values: Friendship and I talked about JDaniel’s working on making new friends.

Crafts and Learning Activities

Olympics for Kids- 12 Olympic Related Activities and Meals

The two activities in the top row are from posts I wrote for the Kids Activities Blog. The first activity is called Olympics of Kids: Color Sorting and the second is called Olympics for Kids: Laurel Wreath.

The first post in the second row Olympics for Kids: Two Torch Painting Projects was a lot of fun to create with JDaniel.

The second post in the second row Olympics for Kids: Long Distance Biking could have been called Getting Him to Ride to a Shadow. JDaniel rode from tree shadow to tree shadow in this post.

If you try any of these activities, please leave me a comment below telling me which one you selected.

Olympics for Kids: Color Sorting

July 15, 2012 By Deirdre

With the Olympics right around the corner it is the perfect time to use the symbols of the Olympics to create Olympics for kids activities that allow children to review or explore learning concepts.

The Olympic symbol of interlocking rings of red, blue, green, black and yellow is a wonderful tool for practicing color identification. Placing colored pom poms to their appropriate colored ring with chopsticks is a fun way to practice finding color matches.

This Olympics for kids activity is so easy to put together. You will need a bag of multi-colored pom poms, a container to hold the pom poms before they are transferred to the rings, a copy of the Olympic rings with the rings colored in, and a fun way to transfer the pom poms. Chopsticks can be used to transfer the pom poms if you have them, but a spoon or tweezers could be used instead.

After moving the pom- poms to the rings on paper you can, introduce moving them into plastic cups that have been arranged into the Olympic ring configuration. Children will need to have the paper displaying the color arrangement of the Olympic rings to use as a guide or a single pom pom could be placed into appropriate cup to let the children know which color belongs in each cup. Using the paper ring display as a guide will provide an extra challenge for children who might easily move the pom-poms into a cup already displaying the color.

There may be some pom-poms in the container that are not the right color for this activity, but you may choose to use them in your pom- pom mixture. This will make sorting more fun.

Why?

They will cause your child will have to dig into the container to search and find the colors they need.

Children will have to analyze whether pom pom is needed before they have it in their transfer tool.

The extra pom poms will also give your child objects they can use to create a border around their Olympic rings or a flag pole at the edge of their ring paper.