We’re in the Olympic season again! And while the Olympic games can be fun to watch, they also give us a chance to expose our kids to some new things. There are different sports that they may not have heard of, and there are different countries participating. The Olympics are full of good conversation starters and learning activities. To make it more fun, and to fight off the late winter boredom, you could even hold your own family winter games!
In this Signing Time Blog post about the Summer Olympic games, we talked about enjoying a specific sport with your child and noticing the good sportsmanship displayed. These are always great things to talk about with your kids, and the Olympics are a good way to get that conversation going.
While we learn about the winter sports, we can go a step further and hold our own family winter games. Here are a few ideas to get you going.
Good old sledding
Head out to your favorite snowy hill and go sledding. You could mark how far your child sleds and then celebrate the farthest sledding mark. Or take some friends and have some sledding races. It doesn’t have to be competitive, though, and you could just enjoy sledding with your kids.
Cross Country
Most of us do not have cross country skis sitting around in our homes, but you could still hold a cross country style event. Bundle up and head on a fun winter hike with your child. Before you go, work together to plan a route that matches your family’s hiking abilities. You can keep it simple, or you could make it a big deal. Maybe even make up some stats about it using your kids favorite characters. “So-and-so made it up this hill in a record breaking 48 seconds. Do you think we can beat that?”
This cross country hike could be moved up a notch to become a biathlon style event. When you start our, strap some Nerf guns to your backs, or just stick them into a backpack. And then you could choose targets along the way, or you could take some targets with you. Either way, adding target practice to a hike can be really fun.
Ice Skating
Of course, ice skating could be a fun outing to add to your own Olympic games. And if you don’t skate or have a place to skate near you, you can still use the idea of a creative skating performance. Challenge your kids to come up with a skating routing to perform for you. They can do this on the floor without ice skates. And then how fun it will be to watch them jump and twirl and slide around. Let them use their imaginations and see what they can come up with!
Curling
Do you have a hallway or a good open floor area? One one end, put a target on the floor with masking tape or draw/print one onto paper or poster board. Then use whatever you have – toy trucks, matchbox cars, balls – anything that will roll or slide. Take turns rolling things down the hall to see if you can make it into the target.
Luge
Make a big slide in your house! Set up some pillows or even a mattress going down a stairway. Then let your child slide down the track. Give points for staying on the track without flopping off of it. Your little ones will have a blast with this!
Make up your own events
Hopefully these ideas got you thinking about other ways you can have some simple Olympic style fun at home. As you enjoy the Olympics with your kids, think of fun ways to incorporate what you are seeing into fun games or good conversations with your kids. There are so many ways to hold your own family winter games.
And then remember that we have an entire Sports section in our Signing Time Dictionary. You could also add our fun Signing Time episode about sports. Check out My Favorite Sport right here with your My Signing Time digital subscription. And if you don’t have a subscription, you can try it out with a 14-day free trial today!