….freshly fallen snow and temperatures just below freezing

Tuesday morning I arrived early for basketball practice. I assigned a couple of students to sweep the snow off the adventure playground and I drew a couple of targets on the brick wall in preparation for the event that G and I were in charge of, the biathlon. In total there were 11 activities that were being set up for our Winter Olympics.

Shortly after the bell rang students waited to be called to the gym where they would find out which country and team they would be part of. We were hoping to start the first activity at 9:00 but organizing 420 students into 22 teams took longer than we anticipated. The older students were the flag bearers and held up their flags which also had a number of letter assigned to it. Before the students arrived their teachers wrote a number or letter on their hands so they would know where to go when they got to the gym.

The challenge was placing the kindergarten children with the older children. It was the first time that the younger children participated in a fun day with the whole school. I think that their teachers were a little more anxious than the kids themselves. The grades 4 and 5 students did an excellent job looking after their younger team members. They assisted them with the activities and ran with them when necessary but most importantly no one was lost or misplaced during the entire morning.

Every team rotated through at least six activities before the morning ended and then everyone returned to their classes where hot chocolate and cookies were waiting.

After lunch all the students went to the gym where all the choirs were called to the front of the room to perform the songs that they would be singing later in the week and in the following week for Kiwanis. This is a music festival that our school participates in every year. It’s a competition where schools compete against each other in different categories. This year we’ve entered a primary choir, junior choir, grade 4 homeroom choir, grade 5 homeroom choir and a boy’s choir.

After the choirs performed we had our closing ceremony for the Olympic games. At lunch G and I tabulated all the scores from the morning’s events and we determined which countries would win the gold, silver and bronze medals.

We asked the flag bearers to pick up their flags and after the Olympic torch and the banner with the Olympic rings entered the gym I called on each country to enter the gym with their flags held high. The spirit in the room was amazing.

Then it was time to announce the winning countries. The winner of the bronze medal was Denmark. Silver went to Sweden and the gold medalists came from Germany.

Enjoy the photos while you listen to

ThePianoGuys – Let It Go (Disney’s “Frozen”) Vivaldi’s Winter