Our 'Special' Olympics

 Well at the start of Week 4 in Term 3, Covid-19 was just a story that was happening in the background of all our busyness with our learning and fun. Now, it is our story to deal with moment by moment and it is getting closer and closer to us and our families. So stay safe out there. Kia Kaha. 

 The Special Olympics Day we ran was a heap of fun, fun, fun, as many of the students will tell you in their own blogs. We decided on 9 kinda crazy games (from a resource put out by Study Ladder ) that the students would contest each other in. They were put into 18 groups of 4 students, by us the teachers, so a mix of boys, girls, age, class etc. Then they had to draw a country name out of a 'hat'. We had chosen 18 countries that we thought they wouldn't know much about. In their group they had to create a flag for the day and answer some information questions about the country on the back of their flag. All the countries had won just a few medals at the Tokyo Olympics so they needed to find out what they were and how many, as well.  Places like Georgia, Estonia, Kenya,  Uzbekistan, Ireland, Cuba, Malaysia, Jamaica, Bermuda, Ecuador, Iran, Morocco, Namibia, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, Thailand, and Turkey. The countries also had to represent the 5 different continents that are represented by the Olympic Rings on the Olympic Flag.

The groups worked extremely well together and it was interesting and lovely to watch them build their team spirit on the day of preparation and the day of the event. The rotation we did meant every team played every other team in one of the sports. They were awarded points against the three Olympic Values of Excellence, Friendship and Respect. The three highest team scores collected the Gold, Silver, and Bronze medals. What was great was team work and attitude were important and so the winners were not necessarily those that had the 'sport minded' students in them, or those students encouraged their team enough that they all did well together. 

It was a great learning experience for us all. We were so busy we couldn't get as many photos as we would have liked but here are a few.