Countdown to the Olympics

We've been talking a bit about the Olympics as it draws near.  It's always an exciting event in the eyes of a child, who can ignore all the scandal and just see it for the exciting opportunity to watch horses jumping and people playing sports that you also play.  I had been debating whether or not I would watch with all the political, economic and doping scandals on top of the crime and illness rampant in Rio right now.  But how often do you get the opportunity to watch so many athletes in such a large variety of events?  And Genevieve loves and plays many of these sports, so will enjoy seeing what she may be able to do if she keeps working.

We began our week by looking at some of the history.  We read some Greek myth, found Greece on a map and learned about some of the first Olympics.  Many people may know that the first Olympics were held in Olympia in ancient Greece.  Only men were allowed - no women could be athletes, trainers or spectators.  And the athletes competed in the nude.  The trainers were required to be nude as well, after a woman claimed to be a trainer for her son.  Her son was a boxer who had a good chance to win.  She disguised herself to support her son, but when he won, her cheering gave her away.  She could have been killed for her crime, but the court let her go home since she was just showing her family love.  But to keep other women from trying to do the same, all trainers from that day forth had to be naked too.

We started a long term project with our work in ancient Greece.  We looked at many types of Grecian pottery so we started the project by creating some clay pieces with our air dry clay.

Tuesday, we talked about Brazil.  We learned about the rainforest, the rivers, and the different people that live in Brazil.  Genevieve especially loved the capybaras and the monkeys.  We also added our T and U animals to our book,  Turtles, tapirs, tarsiers, turkeys, tigers and toucans represented T while uakari and umbrellabirds were letter U.

Wednesday, we talked about how we stay healthy.  We sang Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes and read The Magic School Bus Inside the Human Body.  We mentioned the importance of exercise, nutrition, safety, and hygiene to maintaining the human body.  We painted our air dry clay with red and yellow to make orange clay like the Grecian pottery.  We also added some extracts to our tempera paint to paint with our sense of smell too.

We continued to talk about health on Thursday, concentrating on systems like the skeletal system, the nervous system, and the cardiovascular-pulmonary system.  She used her stethoscope, and we listened to hearts and lungs.  We talked about how our bones are hard and that her bones are stronger than brother's bones.  We also were brave and used a black permanent marker to draw the patterns on our Greek pottery.

We finished the week talking about and trying some of the sports we might see in the Olympics.  We played some soccer and some basketball.  We practiced gymnastics and rhythmic gymnastics.  We played like we were swimming.

We were talking a lot more this week, rather than doing things as mom, dad and brother were all getting over the cold Genevieve shared with us.