In doing some research on the Olympics, I came across the Olympic Values. I had never heard of them before. I had heard of the Olympic Motto, but never the values.What are they?

• 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, 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 weeks, 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 has heard me talk about respect over and over again in regard to respecting those around him. I am not sure that I have talked about it in terms of respecting himself.

Fair Play

He needs to understand that he needs to display fair play when playing with others. That means taking turns with toys and who has to be 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 affects him, I am hoping he will make choices that are fair for everyone.

Knowing One’s Own Limits

I think it is important to 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 beyond what it 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 to 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 needs 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 One’s Health and Environment

I can teach him that it means taking care of yourself to the best of your ability and the world around you.

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 a part of keeping his home environment nice.

Other things he can do:

• Put his dirty clothes in the hamper.
• Dry his hands and put the 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.

These simple ways of working on respect should help my guy to master the first Olympic value.Next week I will focus on the Olympic Value of excellence.

 

 If you are looking for a simple learning craft that is Olympic-related, you can head over to Kid’s Activities Blog. I have a post up there today called Olympics for Kids: Laurel Wreath.