Olympic Games

If you are studying Ancient Greece, you might want to interest your students in a mock Olympic Games. Some events that we associate with the Olympic Games did not enter in until later, but they are fun to include. 
You can start off with a relay race to carry the Olympic torch to the games site. This commemorates the Battle of Marathon, the first of the battles Greece had with Persia. The story is that a messenger ran the 28 miles from Marathon to Athens non-stop to carry the message that the Greeks had won and that he died from exhaustion immediately after delivering the message. 
One of the event you could have is the shot put, an event in which a ball is thrown from shoulder level. The reason it is thrown from there is because it is usually a heavy lead ball, but for your event you can use a Styrofoam, plastic or rubber ball. 
The standing high jump is another great event. They stand close to a wall and jump as high as they can and touch the wall. This can be measured or not. We just did it for fun. The Greeks also competed in race-in-armor. We didn't have any Greek armor available so we competed in Piggy-back races instead.
The pentathlon took place in the afternoon. It consisted of five events :
discus(a Frisbee can substitute for the discus)
long jump,
 (jumping from an appointed spot to a soft spot. We used a sand pile for a soft spot.)
javelin,
(we used an old mop handle)
running, and wrestling.
(We competed in sock wrestling.
Contestants must pull socks off their opponent before the opponent can.)


Finally, a banquet was given for them.
At the banquet they were presented with laurel leaf crowns. (Ours were made from pipe-cleaners and leaves cut from green construction paper.)

The "banquet" for your honored contestants can be just about anything you have on hand.



More Olympic Games at It's a Boy's Life.
and here at Adventures in Mommydom.

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