Kids have worked hard on an awesome Olympics project, integrating world studies, history, symbolism, design, values, maths, English and of course Mandarin!

My kids often get a bit mixed up with continent names and the concept of a continent and a country, even though we chat often over a world map!  So I thought the Olympics was an ideal opportunity to consolidate this a little!  We are going to be doing a unit on ‘Boundaries’ soon, so it’s also a good little intro to that!  We have been chatting about the ‘symbols’ used in the Olympics, and of course the Olympic Rings are the most well known,  representing the Continents!  So the kids drew their own Olympic Rings, and drew the outline of each continent within each ring, with the name of each continent inside.  Integrating Chinese into this activity added to the consolidation well, as the kids could clearly see that all the continents in Chinese ended in ‘洲’ , clearly distinguishing a continent from a country! The Chinese they needed for this activity follows:

Olympic Rings	奥运会五环	ào yùn huì wǔ huán	The Americas	美洲	měi zhōu
Australasia	澳洲	ào zhōu	Europe	欧洲	ōu zhōu
Asia	亚洲	yà zhōu	Africa	非洲	fēi zhōu

We used making our own Olympic medals as another opportunity to focus on a couple of our learning values and attitudes!  We used some old ‘fun run’ medals, to turn into a Gold, Silver and Bronze medal.  On the one side they wrote ‘Olympics, 2016, Rio De Janeiro’ and on the other side they wrote whether it was Gold, Silver or Bronze.  They also had to look over our values and attitudes wall, and pick three that they thought would be needed to be an Olympian!  They chose ‘Commitment’, ‘Integrity’ and ‘Balanced’.  I thought that they were pretty good values to choose, especially as they have seen in the news a lot about cheating in the Olympics, we watched this segment of BTN about what is happening with Russia and the Olympics at the moment. Integrity is a new word in English for them, but they have something to relate it to now! Commitment is another good one as we try to ensure we finish our projects before going onto another!  And of course we also try to be Balanced, making sure we look after our bodies and minds!  The Chinese they needed to find for their medal activity follows:

Balanced	身心均衡	shēn xīn jūn héng	Gold Medal	金牌	jīn pái
Commitment	投入	tóu rù	Silver Medal	银牌	yín pái
Integrity	廉政	lián zhèng	Bronze Medal	铜牌	tóng pái
Rio De Janeiro	里约热内卢	lǐ yuē rè nèi lú	Olympics	奥林匹克	ào lín pǐ kè

Keeping with symbols, we looked into the history of the sport pictograms, learning that new pictograms are designed for each Olympic games.   The kids then printed off the new Rio pictograms, to find out the name of the sport in English and Chinese.  Finding the names for the sports against the pictograms in English, and then finding the corresponding official Chinese term of the official Chinese Olympic Site was challenging but worth it, displaying ‘commitment’ to a difficult task! They came across a few sports they had never even thought twice about in English, as well as the Chinese vocab for these.  Doing this exercise allows us to really think about the composition of these words both in English and Chinese.  We can also make so many connections to general vocab in Chinese, when we learn that Hockey in Chinese literally means ‘Bent Stick Ball’, Trampolining is literally ‘Bouncy Bed’ and BMX is literally ‘small wheel bike’!  The full list of sports are at the bottom of the post.

The kids found a site that has all the pictograms from Tokyo 1964 to Rio 2016, and the designer’s creation context. We learned that Sydney’s pictograms had boomerangs for figures’ arms and legs! Beijing’s looked like calligraphy stamp seals!  Rio’s have used curves in the figures representing their coastline, each one in a pebble shaped boundary!  We discussed why they need these sport symbols, and figured so that every country’s people, no matter what language they speak, can clearly see which sport is being reported on in the coverage. The kids then designed their own pictogram for a new Olympic sport that they thought they would qualify for! They had to come up with their own design, and use symbolism through the shapes and colours that they used.  They then wrote their own creation context.  Looks like the next Olympics will have 我的世界wǒ de shì jiè (Minecraft) and 滑板huá bǎn (Skate boarding) as 2 new sports!

We watched a little history of the Olympic games on BTN before finding out the last 8 host countries.  The kids found their flags, their names in Chinese, and made a little visual timeline to match each flag to the host city on our big map.

Boxing	拳击	quán jī	Table tennis	乒乓球	pīng pāng qiú
Shooting	射击	shè jī	Archery	射箭	shè jiàn
rowing	赛艇	sài tǐng	Golf	高尔夫	gāo ěr fū
Triathlon	铁人三项	tiě rén sān xiàng	Athletics	田径	tián jìng
Rugby	橄榄球	gǎn lǎn qiú	Sailing	帆船帆板	fān chuán fān bǎn
Taekwondo	跆拳道	tái quán dào	Badminton	羽毛球	yǔ máo qiú
Weight lifting	举重	jǔ zhòng	Hockey	曲棍球	qū gùn qiú
Beach volleyball	沙滩排球	shā tān pái qiú	Track Cycling	场地自行车	chǎng dì zì xíng chē
Volleyball	排球	pái qiú	Judo	柔道	róu dào
Tennis	网球	wǎng qiú	Handball	手球	shǒu qiú
BMX	小轮车	xiǎo lún chē	Swimming	游泳	yóu yǒng
Basketball	篮球	lán qiú	Marathon swimming	马拉松游泳	mǎ lā sōng yóu yǒng
Pentathlon	现代五项	xiàn dài wǔ xiàng	Wrestling	摔跤	shuāi jiāo
Soccer	足球	zú qiú	Water polo	水球	shuǐ qiú
Canoe kayak slalom	激流回旋	jī liú huí xuán	Fencing	击剑	jī jiàn
Synchronised swimming	花样游泳	huā yàng yóu yǒng	Diving	跳水	tiào shuǐ
Canoeing	皮划艇	pí huá tǐng	Gymnastics	体操	tǐ cāo
Rhythmic gymnastics	艺术体操	yì shù tǐ cāo	Trampoline	蹦床	bèng chuáng
Equestrian	马术	mǎ shù	Mountain Bike	山地自行车	shān dì zì xíng chē
Road Cycling	公路自行车	gōng lù zì xíng chē