We love the Olympics, and we love bringing the Olympics into the classroom every 2 years! The Measurement Olympics is a fun way to bring measurement and counting into the classroom while participating in some Winter Olympics events! My class loved doing these activities! There was lots of laughing, clapping, and cheering!
The Events
We participated in 5 different Winter Olympics events: curling, ice hockey, ski jump, bobsled, and speed skating!
Before we participated in each event, we watched a video of the actual Olympic event. We discussed the equipment they used and what they were doing.
To measure for 3 of our events, we used gold medals as our non-standard unit. I laminated the medals (included in our Measurement Olympics creation) and taped 15 of them to the floor. For one event, we left the medals blank to practice counting and one-to-one correspondence. For 2 events, we wrote numbers on the medals so we could work on measurement and number recognition.
After each student “competed” in the event, they recorded their result on their recording sheet. At the end of the games, we recorded our official results on the big board and determined our gold medal winners!
The gold medal winners received the big medals (included in the creation) and the rest of the students received smaller plastic medals! We also had a great discussion about hard work, practice, teamwork, and how we all learned and had fun!
Event 1: Curling
Curling is one of my favorites to watch! When we watched the video, my class was so intrigued! For curling, we used a broom and a paper plate. The students pushed their curling stone with the broom and recorded their distance.
Event 2: Ski Jump
This event was just the students jumping and recording their distance.
Event 3: Ice Hockey
For this event, we used hockey pucks that had a rubber coating so they wouldn’t slide as far and fast on the floor. A little control to avoid hockey pucks zooming all over the room! Students hit their puck and recorded the distance.
Event 3: Bobsled
This was by far our favorite event. For this event, I paired the students so they were as close in size as possible. This made pushing the bobsled easier. One student sat in the basket and one pushed the bobsled from one end of the carpet to the opposite end. I timed them and they recorded their time on their recording sheet. This event caused a lot of giggles and laughter. And it was hard. And because of that, we saw a lot of hard work and the class cheered their friends on until they finished the race!
Event 5: Speed Skating
For speed skating, we skated around our carpet. I timed the students and they recorded their speed on the recording sheet! The rule was that we had to slide our feet to skate and not run!
You can see the events in action in this video:
Here are the hockey pucks and sticks we used:
For more ideas and resources, visit these blog posts:
For more measurement lessons and activities, check out our collection of measurement creations:
