Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics

With only 30 days to go, Olympic fever has been spreading rapidly through my classroom. We have been counting down the days to the openning ceremony since the first day of school. Students come to school on a regular basis and tell me about a story they heard about this athlete or that venu. We also adopted a former student who was named to the Canadian Olympic Long Track Speed Skating Team yesterday, Lucas Makowsky. We can't wait to follow his progress and cheer him on during the games. We have set-up a page on our website to track Lucas and to showcase some of the things we have done to support him thus far. Check it out at: http://wilfridwalker.rbe.sk.ca/makowsky

For the students that weren't as excited as the others, they have come on board and joined the band wagon. It helps that the Olympic Torch Relay passed through our city during the weekend giving most of us a more direct connection to the games. I made a video to document the torch's visit to our city over the weekend. You can check it out below. My appologies in advance for some of the shaky cinematography. I need to invest in a tripod. Here it is:

It also helps that my class started working on their online collaborative project on Monday.You can check out our progress over the next 6 weeks on the collaborative project wiki: http://2010olympics.wikispaces.com/

For us, it is a big deal that we are the host country for the Winter Olympic Games. It has been 22 years since we have last hosted such an event. I'm wondering if other people that aren't Canadians are as excited as we are about the start of the games? Or, if you are a Canadian Teacher, are you working on a special project? What are you doing to study the Olympics in your classroom?