If I Were an Olympic Athlete...

What to Do:

1. Ask your child to pick any Olympic athlete, past or present. She doesn’t have to focus just on winter events; she can select a participant from any Olympic sport.
2. Using the first person, have her write a profile about that individual’s career as a professional athlete. Encourage her to highlight interesting life experiences and events. For example, if your child selects speed skater Apolo Ohno, she can talk about how it felt to win the gold, silver, and bronze medals in the Winter Olympics, or discuss the time he and his dance partner Julianne Hough won first place on the television show “Dancing With The Stars.”
3. The goal of this activity is to get her to impart emotion and use descriptive language, not to simply write a factual account. Your child should refer to the dictionary and/or thesaurus to build sentences using new vocabulary words. Provide her with a short list of descriptive words to jog her creativity. Consider words and phrases such as: “ecstatic,” “endurance,” “discipline,” “accustomed to,” “accountable,” “challenging,” “personal best,” “optimistic,” “humble,” “endeavor to,” or “victorious.”
4. Challenge her to come up with a profile that is at least a full page long. Once your child has crafted her story, invite her to read it aloud to you. Make sure to praise any strong writing techniques she used, and compliment her on any particularly compelling sentences.