Olympics Game for Families: Adopt a Country

By Carey Bryson, About.com Guide

Here's an easy way to make watching the Olympics even more exciting and educational for kids: have each member of the family adopt a second country to root for during the Olympics. During opening ceremonies, ask each family member introduce his or her adopted country, point it out on a globe, and tell everyone a little about it. Keep track of how many medals each country has won throughout the games.

If your kids really get into the activity, you can also have them introduce some of the athletes from their country prior to each event you watch. Reading the inspiring stories of hard work and sacrifice can help kids put things in perspective, and after learning about the athletes, they will be more invested in the games. During the Olympics, you can find information about the athletes on the official London 2012 website. You can also find information about the countries participating.

Olympic Medal Chart:

• Print out clip art of flags from your home country and each of the countries your family chooses to follow and glue them on a poster board.
• Print out clip art of one gold, silver and bronze Olympic medal for each country and laminate them. You can use a dry erase marker to keep up the medal counts of each country and update as needed (notice our hopeful counts for U.S.A. as an example - wipes off easily with a little water and a paper towel).
• On our poster, we included the Olympic symbol of the five rings, which represent the five continents of countries participating in the games. We wrote "CITIUS-ALTIUS-FORTIUS" Underneath the rings. This Latin phrase is the Olympic motto, and it means "FASTER-HIGHER-STRONGER."
• At the bottom, the kids created their own Olympic torch. You can find out more about the Olympic symbols and the tradition of the Olympic flame on Olympic.org.