Curling at home

Winter Olympics Fun with Curling

While I wait for my synthetic ice curling rink to magically appear in my basement (how can I make this happen?!), I thought it would be fun to try out something similar on the floor. This took me about 3 minutes to set up, and it's a lot of fun! Of course, there isn't sweeping, but it's a fast game to play and lots of fun.

DIY Curling Game 

What you need:

• Tape (I used painter's tape and electrical tape)
• Poker chips
• A relatively smooth surface

Disclaimer: I may earn a small commission for my endorsement, recommendation, testimonial, and/or link to any products or services from this website. Your purchase helps support my work in bringing you downloads of value and information about educational resources. The link below is an Amazon affiliate link. You can read my full disclosure here.

Purchase a Tabletop Curling Set

Another option is this GREAT tabletop curling game from Elite Sportz! The 'stones' glide really smoothly thanks to ball bearings in the plastic casing. There is no sweeping involved, either, so it's fast to set up and easy to play.

Looking for some winter sports STEM fun? Try this fast and slow sled activity:

Pin these curling ideas for later:

Week in Review

We had a nice, quiet week this week! Yesterday was Valentine's Day and I made a few white and dark chocolate dipped strawberries, and gave the kids origami hearts:

The kids made even more flags, thanks to our Olympic medal tracking:

I confess I made Norway's flag. I am obsessed with the Norwegian curling pants.

Norway's curling pants are Mondrian-inspired! I wish I had a pair!

We had a LOT of snow this week! It is snowing again now. Most people are complaining about the weather, but my only complaint is that it's too icy to run. =) We did get to see (and knock down) dozens of icicles.

The boys all ice skated yesterday, too. I still need to get a pair of skates so I can join them, but they had a blast! I'm so glad I caught them high-fiving on the ice, though I did miss a sweet moment when they were hugging each other.

I hope you had a fabulous week! Though schools are off next week, we don't really a break from homeschooling. I am excited about a few new additions to our homeschooling resources, and will hopefully get to post about them soon!

Flag Fun with LEGOs!

Build Flags of the World with LEGOs

My kiddo year old disappeared for awhile yesterday afternoon. I heard the sound of  LEGO digging, and when he emerged, he had made two flags out of LEGOs. We had just started tracking the Olympic medals in the morning, and he ran with the theme to create some adorable LEGO flags! He started with 5, but I had a feeling I would be seeing more of these over the next few weeks.

What is so great about these LEGO flags is that they can be really simple to make (see the flags on the left in the image below)! You can also get a little more creative and complicated, as with the ones above. Hopefully you can catch the details if you want to duplicate our flag designs.

This is especially fun to do while the Olympics are going on, but really any time you are learning about different countries around the world. Which flags would be the hardest to make with LEGOs? See what your kids come up with!

LEGO Pro tip - try buying LEGOs in bulk, either locally from craigslist or a similar-type Facebook group, or shop online at shopgoodwill.com and try to wait for a good deal. You'll have to wash and sort them (this can take awhile), but it's always been worth it for us. I aim for $5-7/pound but if you can tell there are a lot of good pieces in there, it might be worth more.

Looking for more LEGO activities or tips? Click below to go to

LEGO Tips and Activities

Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you enjoyed this LEGO geography activity!

Turn this activity into a learning opportunity

If you want to give this activity a more structured feel or use it in a classroom, I hope you will consider this resource I put together. Not only do students learn about another country and culture, they need to use critical thinking skills to create the flags. There are 36 flags and countries highlighted, though you can always create your own with this STEM Mats Activity for Flags:

Wordless Wednesday: tracking Olympic medals!

Winter Olympics Activities

I have found a few freebies, crafts, and videos worthy of sharing to help you celebrate the Winter Olympics. I am excited to do this first one with my kids! Activity village has a "Learn to Draw" series that looks super fun:

NBC Learning has some videos all about the science and engineering of the Winter Olympics Games! You can get a close up look at Heath Calhoun's mono ski, and learn about the physics of figure skating. Definitely check these out! They are just about 5 minutes; long enough to learn something but not so long they lose your attention.

This craft was just way too cute to not share! Create your own Olympic ice skates! How sweet would these be hanging in your windows? Rhinestones and Pine Cones shares her tutorial here:

There is also a 100+ page download at Free Homeschooling Deals. I think it might be fun to keep track of all the medals with some of the pages they have provided!

 

How will you be bringing the Olympic Games into your classroom or homeschool room? I think we will have our own mini games at home:

• Speed skating: Racing on our wood floors in socks
• Curling: I will make a painter's tape ring on the floor and we can slide bean bags into the center
• Figure skating: I see lots of spinning around in circles ungracefully and falling on our arses 
• Hockey: We have mini hockey sticks as well as an air hockey table, so I think we will do both!
• Bobsled: Well, we have snow. We have sleds. We can use our imaginations and pretend we are going 50x faster than we actually are.
• Skiing/Snowboarding: I don't ski or snowboard since I got injured just about every time I tried to snowboard. I think we will skip this one, but perhaps we will instead make mini skis or snowboards and race them down our super cool racing ramp! Here is our super cool racing ramp, that my handy husband built for a LEGO party almost 2 years ago, and the kids racing pompoms with straws... I mean, here they are exercising their orofacial muscles to strengthen their speech: