Imaginative play is a powerful way to teach preschool and kindergarten children. Little kids just love to pretend! When it comes to the O is for Olympics lesson, children at the tender age of 3, 4 or 5 years old have no memory of the Olympics. For the most part, they have no clue what it is. That is why I really look forward to our Letter O lesson when a Winter Olympics year rolls around. Learning about the Olympics is exciting and new! [Our school is closed during the summer months so I wait to teach it in a Winter Olympics year.]

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This year I had the help of a brilliant gym teacher, Jennifer. She put all of our games together. The rest of the teachers helped me make the pretend medals and team pennants.

Pretend Olympic Medals For Kids #ad

On the day of our pretend Winter Olympics, all of our little onlookers also participated as athletes. Everyone paraded in, waving pennants and singing “God Bless America” and everyone played in the games. All of our athletes were on Team USA! As we waited for the games to begin, we chanted “USA! USA!” and waived our pennants. The teachers did our best to dress like coaches wearing sweat pants, sneakers, zip up hoodies and USA stickers . My teaching assistant wore her gym teacher whistle, too!

Games For Kids to Pretend They Are In The Olympics

The three indoor events we played were speed skating, curling and the luge. Our students are so young – ages 3, 4 and 5 – that we did not feel comfortable putting them in the luge competition so we brought in large teddy bears for them to push across the room. Fun!

Speed Skating: three children participate in each race. Place two pieces of construction paper on the floor in front of each child. Still wearing their sneakers, your little Olympic skaters stand on the papers and, at the sound of “Go!” they “skate” on the pieces of paper across the gym. First, second and third to arrive are the gold, silver and bronze medal winners. Then, they immediately go to the awards area of the gym to wear the medals and have some of the onlookers cheer for them and exclaim “Yaaa! You’re the winners!” We used a step stool for the gold medal winner to stand in the middle, higher than the other two. For a nice little addition, we also took their pictures.

Curling: our gym teacher brought in three angle brooms and three lightweight bean bags. The students had to push the bags on the gym floor, using their broom. Three participants in each heat of curling = three winners!

The Luge: as I said, to avoid accidents with our little kiddos, we chose to have stuffed teddy bears ride in the luge. The teacher brought in three flying-saucer snow sleds and three large stuffed toys. The students would push the sleds with the bears riding on them to the finish line. Those bears took several spills, proving the wisdom in not having children riding on the sleds!

It was such a fun day. Coupled with our Fruit Loop Olympic Craft and Olympic Bingo Game Activity, this gym class made our O is for Olympics day complete!

Teach your preschool and kindergarten age children all about the Olympics with some really fun pretend play. Put together your own little kid Winter Olympic games! #Olympics #preschool #kids #tips Share on X

Do you have any indoor Winter Olympics type game ideas we can add next time? Please share them!

Enjoy!

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This school year has gone by so fast. Each week’s lesson has been fashioned around a letter in the alphabet. When it came to the letter “O” my first thought had been “Owl” or “Octopus” or, more broadly, “Ocean.” But then it became very obvious that THIS year it had to be “O is for Olympics” — the Winter Olympics are taking place.

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O is for Olympics preschool lesson and games www.ducksnarow.com

Our little 4 year olds were nearly clueless when it came to knowing what the Olympics were. When I asked them, Caleb thought of running. Anna Grace and Lorenzo said “swimming” -all summer sports. No winter sports came to mind at all. We had lots of fun learning about the different winter events, medals and teams.

Letter O is for Olympics #preschool lesson with your own Olympic games and medal awarding ceremony! #Olympics #kids #sports Share on X

Our preschool lesson plan included a Fruit Loops craft. Click here to see it: O is for Olympics Preschool Craft. In addition, we played a fun Olympics “bingo” game and had our own Olympics running competition followed by an awards ceremony.

BINGO GAME:

I have found that my students – ages 3 ½ – 4 ½ -are very happy with completing a game board. At their young age, enjoyment does not require that they beat the crowd. Older children will need to have the rules modified to be like classic Bingo, to make it more exciting.

TOOLS:

Bingo cards*
Picture “calling” cards
Buttons
Card-stock (white)

I made all of the items on my computer using clip-art on Microsoft Word and printed on white card-stock for durability. The buttons were laminated on a page and then cut out (tedious work but worth the effort. I made 12 sets, which I have saved them and reused a few times.)

Part of the challenge of the game is locating the picture on the card. I made three different styles of cards so that my little learners would not be tempted to look on to their neighbors’. The pictures were all the same but their location on the card was different.

For the Olympics, use images of each kind of competition: figure skating, pair skate, ski jump, skiing, curling, hockey, Olympic rings, medal ceremony and the numbers 1, 2 and 3 for medals.

Print an extra card to cut out the pictures. These are your “calling” cards.
Hand out a Bingo card and set of buttons to each child. (Real buttons would work fine, as well.)

HOW TO PLAY: The teacher picks a picture out of the pile and shows it to the students, explaining a little bit about what they are seeing. “Skier. This man is going down a mountain on skis.” Give the children a chance to find the picture and place a button over it.

Game ends when all the page is covered in buttons.

Your little ones will LOVE it.

Older children can look for a row to be filled to call “BINGO”. You will want all of their game boards to have the photos in different places, in this instance.

O is for Olympics preschool lesson with banners and medals from Ducks 'n a Row

PRESCHOOL OLYMPIC GAMES:

The purpose of this fun activity was for our little students to get some exercise while they experience what it is like to be an athlete in the Olympics.

FLAGS: I made Olympic flags for the children to wave as they cheered their friends on to victory. (Flags: colored copy paper triangles with Olympic rings on them glued to large craft sticks.)

MEDALS: We also had three medals for the students to wear as they posed to receive their reward: Gold, Silver and Bronze. (Medals: clip-art printed onto card-stock. Cut it out, punch a hole in the top, run a ribbon through it. EASY.)

THE RACE: My assistant, Katie, and I selected three runners to be in each race; the others cheered on. That day we had exactly 9 students present so three races worked perfectly. (We re-ran the races because the children had so much fun the first time.)

MEDAL CEREMONY: With each race, there were three winners. Placing a small step-stool in the middle for the gold medal winner, we put their medals on them — silver, gold and bronze — and they posed as we applauded and sang the national anthem.

Do I have to tell you that we had the best day ever? We had the best day ever! Made many memories for me and, hopefully, my students. Only five more classes with this group and I’m missing them already.

How about you? Do you have any Letter “O” lessons for little ones? Please feel free to share them in the comments and be sure to go see our Olympics Craft we made with it.

Enjoy!

How To Play Winter Olympics With Fun Indoor Games For Kids

Games For Kids to Pretend They Are In The Olympics

O is for Olympics – Preschool Lesson