ISHPEMING - While the nation's top athletes compete at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, kids on the west end of Marquette County got their own taste of the games this week.
Tuesday, preschoolers at the Ishpeming Public Schools Childcare Center held their own Olympic Games with the help of seven foreign exchange students from the Ishpeming High School.
"I thought this would be a great opportunity for them to meet people from all over the world," said Doreen Bertucci, director of the center.
Leading up to Tuesday, the preschoolers spent time learning about the real Olympics from the torch to skiing to hockey to luge.
Then Tuesday, the got to participate in the Mother Goose Olympics, a series of events based on nursery rhymes.
Wearing red, white and blue, the kids practiced matching with the Three Little Kittens Mitten Match, worked on their hand/eye coordination using a pair of tongs to pick up "pickled peppers" and place them in a container and other activities designed to improve balance and small muscle control.
On hand to encourage the younger kids were the exchange students.
Before starting the games, the exchange students - coming from Switzerland, Germany, Thailand, Austria, Russia and Poland - introduced themselves to the preschoolers.
"We told them where we were from and a bit about our country," said Ruven Kloettschen from Germany. "We could probably improve our English a little bit with the little kids."
Kloettschen said it was encouraging for himself and the other exchange students to speak with the little kids and know that their English was being understood.
"It's definitely fun," he said.
For the little kids, having the exchange students there to cheer on their games made a big difference, Bertucci said.
"This was the real deal for them," she said. "It was a bit more motivating than the everyday activities."
Over at the Aspen Ridge Middle School, the entire school got the chance to get outside and compete in their own winter games.
Organized by gym teacher Jon Beckman, all of the 270 kids in the school went outside together for three days in a row after lunch to compete in events like distance sledding, snowshoe races, snowman building and a sled pull race.
"There's different events so everyone can get outside and get involved," Beckman said.
The kids were awarded individual medals for their events, with their homeroom classes acting as their "countries." The homeroom standings then let the kids know how they're doing.
The school's property offered plenty of space for all the events, with a hill for the sledding events and lots of open space for snowmen and a race track.
In addition to the kids being out, the middle school's full staff of teachers and aides, including Principal Dennis Tasson, joined the kids outside acting as referees.
Johanna Boyle can be reached at 906-486-4401. Her e-mail address is jboyle@miningjournal.net.