Bringing the spirit of London 2012 to our school sports day

Kate Keane, Headteacher of Ewell Grove Infant and Nursery School in Surrey, reveals how the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games were brought to life at the school’s annual sports day and how the Olympic values are inspiring learning.

On a bright and windy sports field in June, our young pupils got to experience what the Games are all about through our Olympic inspired sports day. The ‘Ewell Grove Games’ contained all the fun and excitement of London 2012, with opening and closing ceremonies, musical performances and dance displays (imagine the London 2012 Festival on a smaller scale!). And no Olympics would be complete without a torch relay, which came courtesy of each class taking our specially crafted Olympic Flame around the track before our games began.
Like London 2012, the centrepiece of our day was the raft of sporting events on offer for the children to take part in. Events included Olympic sports such as hurdles and long jump, combined with some equally challenging non-Olympic sports such as a testing egg and spoon race and a hat relay.

Teaching the values

And it’s not just the sporting elements of the London Games that we’ve been using to inspire our pupils. We firmly believe that teaching children to embrace and live by the guiding principles of the Olympic and Paralympic Values will allow our Ewell Grove Community and wider society to thrive. Through the Respect value for example, we’ve been teaching our children about the environment and how to look after it. We’ve also been celebrating difference as part of the Equality value, through which the children have gained better understanding of the need to treat all people equally, with fairness and respect.
I am extremely proud of how our young children clearly demonstrated the values during the sports day, even amongst all the excitement of this momentous occasion! We hope that memories of the day will stay with them forever, as a legacy of the 2012 London Olympics.
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