Mrs. Gelasco's Winter Sports Page

As part of our study on Canada, the children and I brainstormed different Canadian Winter sports. Some children thought of skiing, sledding, and skating. We discussed the Salt Lake City 2002 Olympics and decided that we were going to watch the progress of the athletes and cheer for the Canadian team.

As part of our physical education unit, our class participated in 5 skating lessons. We discussed how skating on the ice is a long-time traditional sport. Some of the children even mentioned some of their favourite Canadian Hockey players.

The skating lessons offered the children the opportunity to go out on the ice and experience this popular Winter activity. Many of our students had not been out on the ice before, and by the 5^th lesson, we noticed a lot of progress.

Some of the comments the children made were "when can we go skating again? I love it!" and one child told me "when I grow up, I want to be a professional skater."

We also talked about snow shoeing, ice fishing and many other Winter sports like snow boarding. We went outside on the playground after it had snowed a lot, and went exploring in our Winter boots. After we had a discussion on how tiring and hard it is to go through deep snow. The children really enjoyed the range of activities we experienced.

We took before and after pictures of our skating trip and displayed them in the classroom. The children enjoyed viewing these photos and noticed differences in their own skating. The children also reflected in their journals about the progress they made.

They had fun!!