Jan. 17, 2022
The Winter Olympics runs from the 4th to the 20th February and will be held in Beijing, China, with the Paralympic Games running from the 4th to the 13th March. Interestingly, Beijing will be the only country to host both the Winter and Summer Olympics and some of the events at next months Olympics will be held at the same arenas that were used during 2008.
The first Winter Olympics were held in France and were actually called the International Sports Week. Since 1924, the Winter Olympics have been held every four years and this year there will be 109 events over the two weeks. We have a range of resources within Purple Mash that schools can make use over the next couple of months.
Children could use our templates to carry out internet research and write a newspaper report about the Winter Olympic or Paralympic Games. They could also research an Olympic or Paralympic athlete and write a report about them. They could also find out more about the events that will be taking place, from Curling to Bobsledding to Skiing and Skating. Children could then create a guide to an event of their choice at either the Olympics or the Paralympics.
Alongside these there are also Fact files on China, Postcards from the games and Olympian profiles that children can complete. They can also use our popular Mashcams to put themselves in the place of a Skier, an Ice Skater, snowboarder and even Bobsled and write about how it feels to compete at the games.
There is always a mascot at every Olympics and this year it is Bing Dwen Dwen – ‘Bing’ means ice and also symbolises purity and strength and ‘Dwen Dwen’ represents children. Using 2paint the children could design their own Winter Olympic Mascot.
The Australian Paralympic Education Program is providing free curriculum-linked resources for Australian school students along with ideas to support the Australian Paralympic Team at the Winter Paralympic Games. It includes a great idea to decorate the village for Australia's Paralympians. They are asking for your students (or your own children) to create some pieces of art to display around the accommodation - details here. Further resources for teachers and students can be found on the Australian Olympic Team's Educator Resources page.
After watching the games, the children can also test their knowledge with our Winter Olympic Quiz.
The BBC has a great animation of Classic Winter Olympic moments created with Lego, children could look to create something similar using 2animate, they could even use 2Beat to create their own Olympic soundtrack.
Whatever you do over the Olympics and Paralympics, we’d love to see what you come up with. You can share your work with us via our Twitter and Facebook profiles.
