Paris Olympics 2024

So my great friend and colleague and I had an off-the-cuff conversation today, sparked by a comment elsewhere that connected Greek myths to the Olympics. We thought that even though we would reference the Ancient Olympics and the Greeks, we thought we would be far more inclined to focus on the era of the modern Olympics with the revival of the games, spearheaded by Pierre de Coubertin.

History Heroes

The French educator and historian who co-founded the modern games introduced sport into French schools – how appropriate is that as a topic? What did de Coubertin and his committee consider important in the modern version? What customs and traditions did they keep or change? What sports were in the first modern games? The first revival in Athens in 1896 was considered successful but failed to spark much interest in the subsequent ones in Paris and then St Louis- how did they gain momentum? What differences can be be identified between the 1900 Paris games and the 2024? How has Paris itself changed? What were the 5 sports that are in every one of the modern games? How many now? And so on…

So I thought maybe just put together some resources for anyone who might be interested. There are scads of them, many of them on the subscriber platforms but I have tried to find ‘free’ stuff – because really, there’s plenty of people who don’t have school subscriptions or big budgets. Have any other great ones to share? Do add yours in the comments. I’m planning to review a couple of favourite books that I would use for this unit of inquiry so keep an eye out for those coming up in the next few weeks. Here’s a clever AI-created ad for the Olympics – why not get your kids get creative in AI free generators to do their own promo? Or themselves as athletes? Or…???