The Winter Olympics start Feb 6, 2014, so it would be timely to do ‘Winter Olympics Club’ during the week of Feb. 10th.
Attire
Tell kids to dress in their favorite Winter Olympics attire. Most kids will just wear snowboarding gear, but some will break out the spandex bobsledding uniforms with motorcycle helmets. Offer prizes for the best outfits.
Forming Teams (Countries)
It’s fun to have teams compete in games throughout club. You can ask kids ahead of time to wear a certain color and represent a certain country. Ex: Seniors (‘Merica: Red, White, Blue), Juniors (Italy: Red, Green, White), Sophomores (Germany: Red, Black, Yellow), Freshmen (Jamaica: Black, Green, Yellow).
You can also form teams (countries) upon arrival by putting stickers on kids or marking their hands.
Here are some other creative ways to divide into teams for mixers.
Music
Play the Olympic Fanfare music as kids enter club.
Have your first club song be the Star Spangled Banner, and ask a few kids to come out waving a big flag. You can also sing ‘Proud to be an American’ and other ideas from ‘Merica club.
Mixers
Ski Team Race
Get 4 8 ft long 2 x 4’s, drill six holes in the wood, put rope through the holes and tie a knot on the bottom. Have 6 kids stand on 2 of the 2×4’s, each holding 2 ropes. Picture cross-country skiing. You can also make foot loops instead of ropes they hold. Here’s a video to give you an idea. If kids fall, they start over. Have 2 teams race, then the next 2 teams, then a championship run. Ask a parent to help build the ‘skis.’
Games
Ski Jump
You need 10 balloons, 2 pillows, and 2 sets of skis, boots
and poles, easy to borrow. Have 2 kids go at the same time and make sure they
can fit in the ski boots. Wearing the boots and skis and holding the poles,
they jump side to side over a pillow. When the crowd yells “bump” (on
cue from a leader) they must sit down on a chair and burst a balloon. Have them
burst 5 balloons each, for the last balloon, use a water balloon. Play fast
music in the background and have a skit character that’s a hyped up ski-instructor
sell the game.
Video Games
Connect a Wii Fit to to the projector and have kids compete
in ski or snowboard video games on the big screen.
Team Bobsled Races
One year we got refrigerator boxes and cut off one side of them to look like bobsleds. It would be fun contact work to get together with kids ahead of time and paint the boxes to actually represent the countries that will be competing during club. Check with Walmart, Lowes, and other local businesses to find big boxes. Have 3 smaller folks from each team get in the box and have another 2 folks push the box. Depending upon the floor of your club room, this will work great, or not work at all. We did it in a carpeted basement and just made the teams race back and forth across the room a couple times. A gym floor would be money.
If you have ideas for Olympics Club, leave them in the comments below or email me here.
Here are tons of other ideas to help plan the spring semester.
