Winter Olympics Lesson - Part One (Tin Foil Trophies)

I just loved the Winter Olympics.  I couldn't let the opportunity pass for yet another themed lesson as this one only comes around every 4 years!

I once again indulged in my love of baking (sugar cookies with coloured icing)...

Olympic rings biscuits for afternoon tea.

It was then onto the lesson which I'm going to publish over two posts.

The first thing we did was make some tin foil trophies.  I was originally going to cover the foil with paper mache inspired by "2 peas and a Dog" (who give great instructions on how to make the foil figure - thanks!) Yet when my children saw what I was doing they told me it looked like a trophy so the trophy idea was born and we stuck with that (so much easier!!!).

Before the lesson we discussed the winter Olympics, what the children had been watching, what sports they enjoyed and looked at some print outs of people participating in the various sports.

What you need:

• tin foil
• cardboard or wood to mount trophy on (I just used some cardboard offcuts I had, wood would have looked really cool)
• textas
• hot glue gun
• pop sticks (large = snowboards, small = skis, small cut into bits = iceskates) and bamboo skewers.

How to:

• Cut three slits in the piece of tin foil (as shown).  I did this prior to the class and handed out the tin foil like this.  I didn't measure these as instructed on the "2 peas and a Dog" blog yet just free hand cut them. I've tried to highlight and make the splits a little bigger in the picture so you can see them more clearly.  I decided against the children doing this themselves as I imagined many cutting it the wrong way and wasting the foil.

• Carefully scrunch up the head, arms and legs (as shown).  Then scrunch in the middle.  I demonstrated first then got them to follow along with me when I did it a second time.

scrunched up head

scrunched up head, arms and legs

• Once you have the general shape of a person you can scrunch up the foil more moulding it into shape (as shown). If the arms or legs end up too long just fold them over and scrunch some more.  NOTE:  a few children managed to pull off heads and arms.  Don't worry about it, just pass them another piece of foil and get them to start again.

scrunched even more - now it looks like a person!

• Position the person into a sports position
• Using a hot glue gun (the children came up to me and I did this for them) add ski's, snowboard, ice skates etc using the pop sticks, skewers etc
• Using the hot glue gun attach the figure to the trophy mount (if you want it in the air doing a trick spear the figure with a skewer then glue the skewer to the mount)
• Decorate the trophy mount

The Results:

Here are some quick snaps I took of some of them before they went home on the day.  I wish I took more photos as they were so cool, especially the ones doing tricks in the air.  Some children also decorated the snow boards and skis (I supplied coloured and plain pop sticks so they had this option).

These can easily be done in a 45 minute lesson and by children as young as 5.

Our Artist of the week is Marc Chagall as he was born in Russia and his art was heavily influenced by the Russian village he grew up in.  Click here to go to our Artist of the week page.

To go with the Russian / Winter Olympics theme we also listened to Tchaikovsky during the lesson.

Cheers Fiona