Explorify and the Olympics

The 2024 summer Olympic and Paralympic Games will be held in Paris.  Athletes’ training techniques, diet and the equipment that they use all help to improve their performance. Explorify provides a wide range of activities that will enthuse children of all ages to investigate sport!

Celebrating Success

Athletes compete against each other with the aim of winning a bronze, silver or gold medal. A great introduction to the Olympics is the Zoom In Zoom Out activity, Celebrating Success. The magnified image slowly zooms out to reveal bronze and gold medals from the 2012 Summer Olympic games. Children learn about the different metals that the medals are made from and their properties. There is also a video in the ‘watch’ section that shows how the medals were made. To take it further, 5-7 year olds could go on a materials hunt, testing each material for strength and flexibility. Meanwhile, 7-9 year olds could test whether all metals are magnetic and older children could investigate rusting.

Different Olympic Sports

The following What’s Going On videos focus on different Olympic sports: Pole Position , Fancy Footwork, Bladerunner, Bounce and Turn, Butterfly Swimming, Sync or Swim and Backstroke swimming. Children can explore how forces can help athletes to perform better.

Fantastic Gymnastics shows gymnasts using a range of apparatus. Children will begin to make links between the human body, how muscles work and that gymnasts build strength, flexibility and stamina in every muscle in their body. They could go on to investigate whether people with longer legs jump further in a pattern seeking enquiry and create a class scattergram to present their results.

What affects our performance during sport?

Athletes need specialist equipment and clothing to help them perform at their best. Children could investigate which materials and designs are most suitable for different sports using these Odd One Outs and Big Questions:

- Gear Up compares three types of sports footwear. Do the children have any questions about the designs? They might wonder whether the boys or girls in the class have longer or wider feet?

- What are the best shoes for running? might inspire children to design the perfect shoes for a specific sport.

- Both Playing places and What is the best surface to run on? might prompt an investigation of the surfaces around school.

- ‘How do racing cyclists reduce friction?  has a video in the watch section shows the cyclists in action, and the background science details the different ways that cyclists minimise friction. Children could go on to investigate air resistance in the playground.

Athletes often seek advice from dietitians to ensure they maximise their performance through the things that they eat. The Odd One Out, Racing Ahead, looks at the breakfast an athlete may eat to keep them healthy and give them energy. Children could sort food into the different food groups and plan a healthy lunch for themselves or an athlete.

There are more activities on Explorify that can help you teach science through sport. In addition, Explorify has collaborated with the Great Science Share to bring you the Great Sport Share, click on the link to their guided enquiry and linked Explorify resources. You can find out how the weather affected athletes’ performance at the last Olympic games, and how this will help athletes in the coming Olympics in this Did You Know article, how climate models help us plan for sporting events.