2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi

The Winter Olympics begin soon so these are some links we'll use in the classroom to 

help us learn more about the games, the history behind them, the Olympians, the countries they represent and the location of the games this month. Go USA!

Here's the main website for the Olympics... olympic.org
There you can find schedules, information about athletes, countries that participate and more!



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"The 2014 Winter Olympics will take place in Sochi, Russia, from February 7 through February 23. Events are divided into 14 sports—15 if skeleton is counted as a separate sport from bobsleigh. (Here, we’re counting them as a single sport.) Some sports have multiple disciplines—men’s and women’s competitions, relay competitions, and races of different distances. Each discipline will have three medalists—gold, silver, and bronze." ~ from National Geographic Education

For information about the sports played in the winter games, check out Sports of the 2014 Winter Olympics on National Geographic Education.

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From NBCLearn:

Science and Engineering of the 2014 Olympic Winter Games
This 10-part video series, produced by NBC Learn and NBC Sports, in partnership with the National Science Foundation, explores the science, technology, engineering and math of the 2014 Olympic Winter Games.

Science of the Olympic Winter Games
This original video collection explores the physics, biology, chemistry, and math behind the Olympic Winter Games.

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http://cybraryman.com/olympics.html

This is a great collection of things you might want to know about the Game as well as teaching materials from Cybraryman, former teacher Jerry Blumengarten.

Time For Kids

This week I'll be sending home our first edition of Time For Kids, a weekly news magazine written especially for children in grades 3 and 4. I will ask the children to read it and complete a related assignment. If you have the time, I would love for you to read an article or two with your child and discuss it together. Exposure to the world outside of where they live and breathe every day is so great for your child and can provide many opportunities for interesting discussion.

TFK also offers a great website that your child may wish to visit from home. We will be talking about it in class so that they'll know how to access it.

Presidential Address

There is a lot of controversy swirling around President Obama’s address today. I wanted to let you know what we talked about after watching it in class this morning.

When it was over, I asked the children to tell me about what they remembered from the speech. Two big messages came across: if you see someone being bullied, you should stick up for them and don’t ever give up. The children had lots to say about how important it is to work hard and keep trying, even if you fail sometimes. We also talked about his comment that “if you quit on school - you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.” [This is an idea that relates directly to an important component of our charter - how the choices you make affect you, the people around you, in your community, etc.] Additionally, we talked about how school can help you discover things you are really interested in or really good at.

After our discussion, I asked them to do some writing. We made a promise to work hard in school so that we could achieve our goals - for most of the children, the goals focused on what they want to become when they grow up. I asked them to finish the writing and include a drawing for homework tonight so your child can show it to you if you are interested in seeing what they wrote.

Here is a link to the address in case you missed it:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/A-Message-of-Hope-and-Responsibility-for-Americas-Students/