Primary Catholic Olympic Games: A Fun Year End Review

Warm Up Exercise for Primary Grades

Materials:

• Paper plates -- one for each child
• pencils, crayons, colored pencils
• Olympic rings and torches (CLICK HERE for patterns)

Remind students that Olympic athletes need to warm up before competing. The group’s warm-up activity will be for students to write their names on paper plates (one plate for each child), and to decorate the other side with words and pictures that show things they remember learning in religion class this year. Show students a sample that you have prepared ahead of time.

Tack plates, with names displayed, to a bulletin board or tape to a wall. Each time a student earns a point in the Catholic Olympic Games, Olympic rings or torch is drawn or affixed onto his or her plate.

Just for Fun
National anthems are played at Olympics games. You may want to help your students create an anthem for their Catholic Olympic Games. Select something that is moving and upbeat, such as “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Or perhaps athletes might write their own anthem to a popular tune. A fun way to sing your anthem is to form a circle and, going from athlete to athlete in a clockwise direction, have athletes take turns singing only one word at a time.

Olympic Event: Tic-Tac-Toe Relay Race

Materials:

• Large tic-tac-toe grid drawn on newsprint or poster board.
• 10 sticky notes, five displaying a drop of water and five displaying a dove. (For additional races, you might want to make more sets of sticky notes: a host and a chalice; Jesus and sheep; etc. Be sure to review with students what each symbol means.)
• Two throw pillows about the size of a child’s head
• A roll of masking tape.

Hang the grid in a spacious area. Divide athletes into two teams of five. Give each athlete on one team a sticky note with a drop of water on it. Give each athlete on the other team a sticky note with a dove on it. See if athletes know what Sacrament those symbols represent.

Press a piece of masking tape on the floor in front of the first person on the team to indicate the start/finish line.

Line up teams side by side, one team member behind the other. On the word “Go,” the first person on each team puts a throw pillow on his or her head, moves toward the tic-tac-toe grid, and places a sticky note on the grid. If the pillow falls off, the athlete needs to return to the start/finish line and start over. When the athlete successfully reaches the tic-tac-toe grid and puts a sticky note in place, he or she takes the pillow off and rushes back to the team member next in line. The first team to get a tic-tac-toe wins, and each winning team member gets a point.


Olympic Event: Hymn Hum-Athon

You will need to select from a parish hymnal those hymns that students should know, including seasonal ones such as “Silent Night” and “Jesus Christ Is Risen Today.”

As individuals, in pairs, or in teams, athletes guess the hymn you sing—but you are not singing. Hum the hymn or sing it only with la-la-la and/or da-da-da. Athletes get a point for every hymn they guess correctly.

Olympic Event: Animal Freestyle Charades

Materials:

• Slips of paper on which you have written or pasted pictures of animals that are mentioned in the Bible (see list of possible animals below)
• Basket for the slips of paper

Animals in the Bible
Here is a list of animals in the Bible and a suggestion for the circumstance in which each is mentioned.

BIRD/DOVE: The Holy Spirit appeared in the form of dove at Jesus’ baptism (Luke 3:22).
CAMEL: Jesus said it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to get into heaven (Mark 10:25).
DOGS: Dogs licked Lazarus’ sores (Luke 16:21).
DONKEY/ASS: Before he was arrested and crucified, Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey (Matthew 21:2).
FISH: A great fish swallowed Jonah (Jonah 2:1).
FROG: A plague of frogs afflicted Egypt (Exodus 8:1).
GOAT: Jesus said that at the last judgment, people will be separated like sheep from goats (Matthew 25:32).
HORSE: Egyptian soldiers chased the Hebrews in horse-drawn chariots (Exodus 14:9).
LION: David killed a lion while protecting his sheep (1 Samuel 36).
LOCUST/GRASSHOPPER: John the Baptist ate grasshoppers in the desert (Matthew 3:4).
OX: Jesus cleared the temple area of money-changes and those who were selling oxen, sheep, and doves (John 2:14).
PIG/SWINE: Jesus cast evil spirits into a herd of pigs (Mark 5:11-13).
ROOSTER/COCK: A rooster crowed after Peter denied Jesus three times (Matthew 26:75).
SHEEP: Jesus is the Good Shepherd and we are his sheep and follow his voice (John 10:27).
SNAKE/SERPENT: Satan appeared to Eve in the form of a snake (Genesis 3:1).
WOLF: In the Kingdom of God, the wolf and the lamb shall graze together (Isaiah 65:25).

Olympic Event: Faith-Statement Challenge

Materials:

• A list of faith statements that the students need to complete

Read the first part of a faith statement to an athlete. You can use lines from prayers (“What is the next line in this prayer: ‘Our Father who art in heaven…’”), Mysteries of the Rosary (“The first Joyful Mystery is…”), the Ten Commandments (“The Third Commandment is…”), statements about the Sacraments or Christian symbols or familiar hymns (“‘Amazing grace…’ What comes next?”). Make sure every athlete gets a chance to complete a faith statement. A correctly completed faith statement results in the athlete getting a point.


The Closing Awards Ceremony

You will need prizes, at least one for each athlete. (Even low scorers are winners in the Kingdom of God.) You may want to make gold, silver, and bronze medals out of pieces of construction paper or poster board attached to ribbon. You might want to invite the two students who scored the most points to help you distribute prizes. Small religious articles make great prizes.

While students are receiving their prizes, take down the paper plates. Then remind students that together we all belong to the family of God—and family members pray for one another. As a final activity in your Catholic Olympics Games, each child is going to receive another child’s paper plate. This plate will remind the student throughout the summer to pray for the person whose name is on the plate.

Distributing the plates is going to create a lot of movement, so you will need an open space. Have students stand together in a group. They will try to catch a paper plate as you toss them, one by one, into the group, Frisbee-style. When a child catches a plate, he or she leaves the group and waits until every child has one. (Do not allow students to trade plates. We are family, and we pray for each other, even those with whom we may not be good friends or know very well.)

Then have students join together in a circle for a prayer to officially close the 2010 Catholic Olympic Games. “Loving God, please keep everyone in this family circle safe and happy this summer. Guard us all in body, mind, and soul, especially the classmates for whom we promise to pray. We ask you these things through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

For Catholic Olympic Games for Intermediate Grades click here!


Sister Alice Ann Pfeifer, CSA, has been a Sister of St. Agnes for over 30 years and a religion teacher and writer for the past 20 years. She has a master’s degree in pastoral studies from St. Joseph’s College of Maine.

Source: CATECHIST Magazine, April/May 2010
Copyright 2010, Peter Li, Inc. This article may not be reprinted or reproduced in any form without permission, except for use with your classes or families.