With the winter Olympics just around the corner, it’s a great time to get students (and teachers and parents) active and inspired by the worlds best athletes.

Here are a few quick ways you can integrate the winter Olympics into your physical education program.

Living Skills

Interpersonal Skills

– Apply relationship and social skills as they participate in physical activities. Work cooperatively with others in winter Olympic sport situations.

Critical and Creative Thinking Skills:

-Use a range of critical and creative thinking skills and processes to assist them in making connections, planning and setting goals, making decisions in connection with sport situations (e.g., use creative thinking skills to come up with a new defensive strategy; make and explain healthy eating choices).

 Active Living

Active Participation:

-Actively participate in a wide variety of winter Olympic themed physical activities (e.g., cross country skiing, curling, floor or ice hockey, ice skating).

-Demonstrate an understanding of factors that contribute to their personal enjoyment of bring active-Identify ways to be physically active at school and home.

Physical Fitness:

-Demonstrate an understanding of how being active helps them to be healthy.

-Describe different types of winter Olympic activities that training for would improve the strength of their heart and lungs.

-Participate in setting and achieving realistic personal and group goals related to physical activity. Connect goal setting to that of winter Olympic athlete.

Safety:

-Demonstrate behaviours and apply procedures that maximize their safety and that of others while participating in winter Olympic themed activities.

-Identify environmental factors that pose a safety risk during participation in winter Olympic themed physical activity. Analyze  winter Olympic sports and the equipment wore by athletes to protect them from environmental factors.

-Describe how to respond and act on injuries incurred while participating in physical activity (e.g., remain calm, stop all activity and hold the equipment, ask an injured person if he or she needs help, tell an adult what happened, avoid crowding the injured person).

Movement Competence

Movement Skills and Concepts:

-Perform a variety of locomotor movements, traveling in different directions, speeds, levels, and pathways while using different body parts (e.g., cross country skiing, figure skating). Be sure to reference the safety guidelines.

 -Send and receive objects of different sizes and shapes with and without equipment (e.g., curling, ball/floor/ice hockey).

Movement Strategies

-Demonstrate an understanding that different winter Olympic physical activities have different components (e.g., movement skills, rules and boundaries, conventions of fair play and etiquette).

-Apply a variety of simple tactics to increase chances of success while participating and exploring physical activities.

 Don’t forget to check out the new Sochi 2014 Class Resources from the Canadian Olympic committee here.