Working Mom Wonders: "Back to School" Summer Olympics

As summer winds down, we are busy cramming in as many activities as we possibly can.

We wanted to get together with our summer play group at least one more time, so we planned a "Back to School" Summer Olympics. It was a busy day, but the kids had a lot of fun. Here is a breakdown of how the day went.

We kicked off the celebration with an opening ceremony. Each of the kids got a "torch".

To make the torches, I cut strips of red, orange, and yellow tissue paper. Each torch had three strips (one of each color) folded in half and placed in the cardstock holder.

The cardstock holder is just a white piece of cardstock rolled up and stapled at the bottom.

We stood outside in front of the games, held our torches, and blasted a confetti blaster (bought for $2 at the party section of Wal Mart.)

Then we had lunch...We tried to incorporate a "ring" or circle theme for our Olympic party. I made a taco ring (http://workingmomwonders.blogspot.com/2013/03/taco-ring.html) and a BBQ chicken ring. (Rotisserie chicken, barbeque sauce, and shredded cheese in crescent rolls)

I made up a sandwich platter as well. Using Texas toast and a circle cookie cutter, I made circle sandwich bread. I also cut the cheese with the same cookie cutter.

We also had circle pretzels, peach and apple rings, and apple donut holes.

To create the apple donut holes, I bought unglazed donut holes, rolled them in my own glaze (1 cup of powdered sugar, 1/4 tsp. vanilla, and 2 Tbls. milk) and rolled them in colored sugar. The stem is a tootsie roll broken up and molded to resemble a stem. I cut a green chocolate melting disc into four pieces to represent a leaf.

Also on the food table is an Olympic ring pretzel brought by one of the moms, and shaped fruit kabobs.

As one of our activities, another mom brought circle sugar cookies. The kids each got a frosted cookie and decorated their own "medal" with gold sprinkles and gold spray. We also brought out other colored sprinkles and let the kids add any colors they wanted.

Another activity the kids could do inside was create their own pencil holder. This is just a colored toilet paper roll with the ends cut and folded up. (I was lucky enough to find these at Michael's. Regular toilet paper rolls could be covered with paper or painted.) The kids put stickers on them, wrote their names, and drew on them with crayons and markers.

The outside activities were a big hit. We set up an obstacle course for the first game. Most of the games came from my daycare provider. She had accumulated these things over the years when she did these games at daycare. I did find some games at Party City and random things from garage sales.

The obstacle course started with a tunnel to crawl through, a sack to jump in, a hurdle to jump over, another sack to jump in, and to win, the contestant had to throw a bean bag from their own hula hoop into the basket at the end.

The next game was an egg/spoon relay.

The kids really seemed to enjoy the parachute. They played a Red Rover game with it and a popcorn game. (ball placed on top of it)

We also had a little duck pond. These were Olympic glow-in-the-dark ducks placed in water. I drew different colored stars on the bottom of the ducks. There were prizes in the house placed on colored construction paper. The kids matched up the color on their duck to the paper in the house. They picked a prize located on that color of construction paper.