Maths Winter Olympics

The winter Olympics are an amazing sporting event that most Australian’s don’t know a whole lot about.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t use it as a great context for some maths investigations.

Here are 6 cool (pardon the pun) ways to infuse some Winter Olympics into your maths lessons.

1. Coin Curling: Students place the coin on the edge of a table and use their open hand to push the coin. Draw a target in chalk or on paper on the table. Make each area of the target worth different points. For example., 3,2,1. For senior students the values could be 1, 0.1 and 0.01. Each player has 3 turns pushing the coin and determines their score according to where their coins land. The student with the highest score is the winner!

2. Ski Jumping: Set up a ramp using a piece of cardboard resting on a cup. Each player rolls 3 coins down the ramp. They can choose their best coin and measure the distance it rolled. Junior students use informal units to measure. Senior students use formal units.

3. Speed Skating: Students put newspaper/pamphlets under their shoes and slide around a predetermined course. Time the students. Compare the times after each student has completed the course to determine first, second and third places.

4. Ski Slalom: Place paper cups in a zig zag arrangement on a table. Using a straw, students are timed as they push a cotton ball around the course. Fastest time is the winner. Senior students can use angles to create the slalom course.

5. Ice Hockey: Place a hockey ‘goal’ at one end of the table (we used a paper cup). Using a wooden ruler students attempt to hit an ice block into the goal. Each player has 3 shots. Two points if they keep the ice on the table. 5 points if they get the ice in the goal.  First to ten points wins. You might like to use decimals or fractions for senior students.

6. Figure Skating: Students have one minute to make up a figure skating routine. They get points for the number of shapes they can make with their body through the routine.

Don’t forget to collate the scores across the events. This could be in the form of a table or spreadsheet. Senior students could do this themselves, you could simply model this for Junior students. 

These activities provide the perfect context for time, length, addition, shape, ordering and comparing. I hope you find them engaging!

Finally, you can find a video showing us completing all the events here.