Did you know . . .

Each Olympic ring represents a continent?  In case you’re wondering, North and South America are combined as one continent, and Antarctica, which is mostly populated by penguins, is not included.

Even though the rings symbolize continents, no particular color represents a particular continent.

Baron Pierre de Coubertin, a teacher from France, invented the modern Olympic Games, the interlocking rings symbol, and the flag.  Aren’t French teachers clever?

The Olympic Rings on a white background make up the official flag of the Olympic Games.  Every single country who participates in the Olympic Games has one of these colors on its flag.

The Olympic Flag was officially adopted in 1914, and it was first flown for the 1920 Olympic Games.

The 2008 Beijing Olympic mascots, the Fuwa, each represent one of the Olympic rings?  Read my previous post Meet Fuwa to learn more about these cute little guys!

Let’s Learn a Language!  Here are the colors of the Olympic Rings:

English: blue, yellow, black, green, red

French: bleu, jaune, noir, vert, rouge

Spanish: azul, amarillo, negro, verde, rojo

German: blau, gelb, schwarz, grün, rot

Chinese: baolán, huángnse, heise, luse, hongse (Sorry, most of my accent marks are missing.  Mandarin is challenging for me!  Maybe this will video will help:)

Practice your new words, then get ready to participate in the Language Olympics.

Fly Swatter Event: Scatter colored rings around the room.  Hand competitors a fly swatter.  Call out a color in the language of your choice, and see who can be the first to swat it!

Olympic Ring Toss Event: Give each player a small flying disc.  (The ones I use look just like the Olympic Rings.  You can find them at the Oriental Trading Company.)  Set up targets in the colors of the rings.  Call off a color in the language of your choice and let the kids toss their rings.  The ring that lands closest to the correct color earns a point.

The Olympic Flag Grab Bag Event: Give each player a picture of the Olympic flag.  Place several small pieces of colored paper in a paper bag.  Pass the bag around.  Players close their eyes and reach inside for one color.  If they can identify it in a foreign language, they may keep it and place in on the matching ring on their flag.  Continue with the next player.  Whenever a duplicate color is drawn, that player loses a turn.  The first player to collect all five colors wins.

For more fun color ideas, check out  Foreign Language Color Games.

To purchase classroom materials for teaching novice-level French or English learners about the Olympic rings, follow these links:

Olympic Flag for ESL

Olympic Flag for French Learners

Want to learn a French song about the Olympic rings?  Click here.

Photo Credit:  http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Olympic_rings.svg