Our Olympic Week

This week has been so much fun! When we decided that Gregg would be taking a week off of work to help with "Mission: Potty Training," we thought it would be perfect timing to do it during the Olympics, and we were right. Having him here has not only lessened the burden in the potty training, but we have had a lot of fun teaching the girls together this past week!


Friday evening, we watched the Opening Ceremonies and had a carpet pizza picnic :-) The girls watched parts of it, and then we paused it (I love Tivo) to put the girls down and finish watching it without continually rewinding it to hear what the reporters just said! Saturday and Sunday was a light introduction to the Olympics and China by simply watching some of the coverage and pointing things out -- the majority of the time we were focused on potty training, which I will talk about in another post :-)


Monday is when we began our unit on China and the Olympics. We had covered China for two weeks earlier this year (posted here, here and here), so we chose to focus on panda bears for this unit and just recap all of the earlier information while reading stories like Ping and The Story of Chopsticks, and looking at pictures of China. I was BLESSED to win the Geography section of the Homeschool Share Blast and one of the prizes was an awesome prize pack from Jimmie that included Chinese money, post cards, Olympic stickers, Chinese character stickers, artwork, Chinese snacks and bracelets, decorations, map, and several other items. . . it was awesome! Those items filled in the majority of the fun decorations on the Unit Study Table (along with our fun dragon and tiger puppets Gregg had brought back from China that are shown hanging from either end of the bookshelf).


On Monday and Tuesday, our focus was China. We read the stories and did a lapbook on pandas. We made a fan craft from Ni-Hao Kai-lan and learned more Chinese words. We looked at pictures from Daddy's trip to China and looked at the Flat Stanley pictures he had taken of the girls that made it look like THEY were in China! We also began our Read Aloud, The Hour of the Olympics. We have had a lot of fun learning more about Panda Bears and I have been impressed with how much they remember. It has been fun showing them some of the snippets of video from the late (late, late, late) night coverage of the Olympics that included, a few days ago, an adorable segment on panda bears :-)


Wednesday we began discussing the United States of America. We got out a few flags, talked more about it in detail and looked at it up close, and we went over the Pledge of Allegiance and The National Anthem. We talked about what "indivisible" means, discussing how our family is also "indivisible", and we divided our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I also showed them the Pledge in Sign Language (one of the very few things I remember learning in Girl Scouts in the fourth grade!). They quickly picked up on how to say "America" in ASL and are having fun with that! Then we sang the National Anthem, talked a bit about it, and then hopped on Youtube. We listened to our country's best singers perform the anthem at various football events, listened to an adorable 6 year old sing it, and found an awesome video of a 3 year old girl say the pledge in English AND Spanish! We are definitely saving that one! The girls loved it :-)

Wednesday night was our Chinese party. We made Chinese lanterns from Nick Jr.'s Kai-lan site, put chopsticks on the table that Daddy had gotten for us in China, and dressed up. Cali wore a silky kimono that my mom had made for me when I was a toddler and Jordan wore a Chinese shirts with tons of Chinese characters on it. Daddy wore a Karate Gi and I wore a Chinese robe :-) We ate yummy homemade Chinese stir fry and dumplings. Our dessert was red, white and blue Popsicles! After dessert, we watched the Olympics while making some more Chinese crafts including a "fortune teller" from Kai-lan (I remember making these all the time when I was younger!) and origami art including a grasshopper, flower and Chinese tiger (ok, Daddy made these mostly but we all "ooh'ed" and "ahh'ed").

Thursday we reviewed what we had discussed the day before. Gregg and I had fun with the fun $1 bin Target finds that quiz you on all of the states (dry erase placemat that we used to test ourselves on states and capitals. . . let's just say that DADDY will be teaching all three of his girls this stuff) and looking at an old Fisher Price map that I had when I was little that shows every state's capital, landmarks, scenery, famous people, and fun facts! Unfortunately I woke up with a horrible headache and Gregg sent me to bed around noon, which I happily listened to, assuming I would take a quick cat-nap. Around 5:45 pm, the girls hopped on the bed to tell me it was time to wake up LOL! I guess staying up till 3 am the past few nights watching the Olympics coverage and then waking up at 7 am to bring the girls to the potty had finally caught up with me!! The girls had a blast with Daddy though, who was MUCH braver than I was and brought them to Wal-mart (remember we started potty training on Saturday)! Since it was a lazy day, we decided to celebrate America by eating some of America's finest -- pizza rolls and macaroni and cheese. Let it not be said that we don't provide wonderfully nutritious homemade meals here, HA!


Today we will be doing a few flag crafts and finishing our lapbook on the olympics (I glued two file folders back to back, so on one side you have a traditional red lapbook on China and panda bears, and on the other side you have a traditional yellow lapbook on the olympics). We will be going over the Olympic Oath, medals, looking at our various books and fun links and talking more about the different sports. Tomorrow we will have the Harris Family Olympics and an olympic celebration, complete with Olympic cake and then Sunday will just be a fun review!


I will post pictures of the Family Olympics and the completed lapbooks soon. How is your week going???