50+ Educational Resources to Learn about the Winter Olympics

With the Winter Olympics right around the corner, here are more than 100 resources you can use to get your homeschool ready!

Years of sacrifice, thousands and thousands of hours of practice, injury after injury

For a moment, a shot at the gold for something they love. With all the world watching.

Man, I love the Olympics! And I can’t wait to incorporate them into our homeschool this winter.

How to Study the Olympics in Your Homeschool

Do you sprinkle themes throughout your school day/subjects? Or is your style to study topics, like the Winter Games, separately from your other subjects?

We usually do special topics as a ‘morning basket’/mini-unit study. I find it difficult to do it the other way. We include various subjects into the study, we just do the topic as its own separate ‘subject’.

In this case, we will do some things every day & then, two or three times a week, we’ll spend extra time to do additional Olympic activities.

What Olympic topics can you study?

History of the host country
Geography of the host country and/or participating countries
Explore the food culture of the countries through recipes
Several historical events have influenced the Olympics, including Germany’s hosting of the 1936 Olympics and the Cold War’s influence in the famous “Miracle on the Ice” hockey game in 1980.
Current events involving the various countries
The science behind different sporting events
Exploring the science of the medals (and the design)

Resources We’ll Use Each Day

My middle school kiddos’ schoolwork already includes daily current events. We’ll swap out some of their usual current event time for coverage of the Olympics instead. Rather than telling them what to read, though, I’ll give them the following news links, and they can choose the topics & sources they prefer.

Ditto for the science of the games videos they’ll watch each day.

Olympic LEGO Challenge Cards
Draw the Winter Games (chalk pastel art lessons)
Winter Games YouTube Playlist (curated by me)
NPR’s Coverage of the Games
Team USA News

BBC’s Coverage of the Winter Games
NBC’s Olympics News
Science & Engineering of the Winter Games by NBC (each vido is 4-5 minutes)
Winter Olympics: A Series of Classic Moments (2-5 minutes each)
15 Fun Olympic Writing Prompts

Learn about China

Swish, Spin, Ski: Learn about the Sports

Growing up in the Midwest, winter events were pretty foreign to me. Other than ice skating, I didn’t have any experience with any other winter sport. Most of us in America don’t have regular exposure to these events. So now is a great time to learn about some of them.

The Winter Olympics
The Winter Olympics: A True Book
What are the Winter Olympics? (From the Who is? series)
Treasures of the Winter Olympics
Paralympic Sports Events (Winter Olympic Sports)
Great Moments in Olympic Events book series
Winter Olympic Sports book series

Science & Engineering of the Winter Games by NBC (each vido is 4-5 minutes)
The Slick Science of Making Ice & Snow
Why Curling Ice is Different than Other Ice

Famous Winter Olympians

And for a little fun? Cool Runnings is a fun movie about the winter games.

Back to the Beginning

While the first Winter Olympics weren’t until 1924, if you want to go back a little further, you could learn about the first Olympics in Ancient Greece. If you are studying the Ancients this year, this would be a fantastic add-on for your year.

A Visitor’s Guide to the Ancient Olympics
Ancient Greece & the Olympics Unit Study
Hour of the Olympics {Magic Tree House}
Ancient Greece & The Olympics {Non-fiction companion to Hour of the Olympics}
Adventures in Ancient Greece: Good Times Travel Agency
You Wouldn’t Want to be a Greek Athlete
DK Eyewitness Ancient Greece
History Pockets: Ancient Greece
Tools of the Ancient Greeks: A Kid’s Guide to History & Science of Ancient Greece
Ancient Greeks: The Olympic Games by BBC
Origins of the Olympics (6:54)

Historical Events Around the Olympics

Cold War & Hockey: Miracle on Ice (32:26)
How the Modern Olympics Got Their Start
The Nazis, The Radio, and the Star: Jesse Owens
Nazi Olympics Tangled Politics and Sport

The Invention of Radio (41:42)
Austerity Games of 1948 revive Olympic spirit after WWII
The First Televised Games (a few additional stories are at the bottom of this one)
The 1961 Plane Crash That Wiped Out the US Figure Skating Team

Olympic Language Arts for the Younger Crowd

Science of the Winter Games

Art, Music, & the Olympics

For the Younger Crowd

For the Older Crowd

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50+ Educational Resources for the Winter Olympics to Get Ready, Get Set, LEARN!