The first Olympics history lesson

Sometimes homeschool history lessons are an excuse to get some energy out.  That’s certainly true with the first Olympics lesson we did the other day. It was part of a great Ancient Greece Unit that we repeated a few different times.

Okay, I pretty much am just putting this in here because the picture cracks me up.  Batman and I went to dinner on Saturday as part of our annual “Shop for your siblings’ Christmas present,” and he was excitedly explaining something to me.

He really cracked me up spending a good 5-10 minutes searching for a present for his brother that would have 2 guys so they both could play.

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But, back to the First Olympics

So, Olympics.  Over at All Things Beautiful she did a very cool post on the Ancient Olympics.  I remembered it when we got to this point in history in Mystery of History 1, and staged our very own mini-ancient Olympics.

 

Supplies we used for our first Olympics

toothpicks, frisbee

And now I present: The First Olympics as done by preschoolers

Toothpick javelin throw.  The kids were very disappointed they didn’t get to keep throwing these.

They also wanted to use them as swords.

And were horribly disappointed when I didn’t let them do that.

 

Racing, we opted for the hands and knees version since we were doing it inside.  When we did the ancient Olympics in elementary school, we did a longer race in the backyard.  But they quite liked this version now.

Long jump, and I’m really wondering what the heck that is in the bottom corner there.

Either way, the kids were all cheaters and wouldn’t jump just once.  I am quite sure they did not jump as far as they claimed they did.

We tried a discus throw, but it became complicated by the dog “helping.”  Really, it was helpful for some because their discussion got much further.  But it did make accurate measurements hard to do.

Ancient Olympics Resources

Okay, now when we went back and studied the Ancient Greeks again when the kids were older I found some YouTube videos to watch with them.

Oh my, I was wrong I missed that on my first pass of videos. That has now been changed.

I have a second video from BBC Education, but that can’t be embedded for some reason, so you will have to go to my Ancient Greece Playlist:

Which at the point I’m updating this post is 66 videos. That number will change as I continue to find more videos that I like.

Now let me go find a few books to share.

• Magic Treehouse Fact Tracker: Ancient Greece and the Olympics
• You Wouldn’t Want to be a Greek Athlete
• Hour of the Olympics

Sadly, there are not a lot of books for younger kids about the Ancient Olympics, the best I found was some Magic Treehouse stuff, and the always popular You Wouldn’t Want series.

What are some more ancient Greek activities?  Then check out:

• Ancient Greece for preschool
• Greek mythology
• Ancient Olympics (elementary version of this lesson)

Or see all ancient Greek posts.