The Olympics start this Friday in Sochi, and I’m going to guess that many of us will watch at least some of the coverage with our families and it will be all over the news. So today I’d like to look at some resources that might be helpful or interesting when sharing the Olympics with children, especially given some of the controversy surrounding this year’s Olympics location.
LINKS ABOUT THE OLYMPICS
The National Science Foundation has paired up with NBC to create a ton of video resources for NBC Learn (read about their work in the article Science and Engineering of the Olympic Winter Games 2014)
PBS Newshour’s article Russia and the Olympics: a brief background provides a nice overview on some of the issues that children may hear about at this year’s Olympics, including internal tensions, civil rights violations, and corruption, and and article at the Atlantic focuses on LGBT rights
Human Rights Watch goes behind the scenes and looks at human rights leading up to the Olympics with videos, photographs and other resources. (links are in a black bar below the article).
Follow the Paralympics to see more world-class athletes.
Given NBC’s tone deaf commentary during the opening ceremonies at the last Olympic Games that made us all seem a little geographically ignorant, you may want to use these sources to learn more about the countries participating in what’s going to be the “biggest Winter Olympic Games ever:” map on the official site, 7 countries participating for the first time, 8 events debuting at this Olympics, and by the numbers.
And just for fun, there’s always the mascots’ page, and fashion spreads of what every country will wear to opening ceremonies
LINKS OF THE WEEK
Here’s a quick article over at Popular Science listing some important information about concussions, including the that soccer, boxing and hockey are way worse than football for avoiding concussions.
The National Center for Sciene in Education’s “Science League of America” blog examines Glenn Beck’s historical ignorance today, and posts the answer to their weekly “Fossil Friday” question, in which readers can attempt to identify a fossil image.
The Sunday Book Review examines the book All Joy No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenting by Jennifer Senior, who reports that her research shows that having children makes people less happy (I haven’t had a chance to read this yet, but was intrigued by an interview on NPR with the author and a group of parents)
image credit: Spinheike at Pixabay
