Modern Pentathlon

Older toad turned 6.  There's a whole other post about the passage of time in there, but his party this weekend was fun.  In the spirit of the Olympics, we set up a modern pentathlon course.  You're probably wondering what modern pentathlon is.  It's 1 day to compete in fencing, shooting, show jumping, swimming and running.  Here's the link for the governing body.  The real event is coming up this last weekend of the Olympics.

Of course you start the Olympics with the lighting of the Olympic torch.

Rather than arm the kids with guns, we made the Olympic rings out of pool noodles.  The black one is spray painted and all of them are made round with a stick in the hole and a duct taped seam.  I made targets out of paper, they had a bucket of water tinted with tempera paint and a squirter.  They needed to try and get every target with one reload.  This idea I adapted from a Parents Magazine article you can find here.

Next we moved on to fencing.  I thought actual swords would end up in tears so we made small swords and put them in the sand.  Another set of pool noodles needed to be tossed on to the matching colored sword.  It was actually pretty hard.

Spot was trailered down to the beach and was the mount for all the athletes.   He's a steady Paint.   It was timed with penalties for dropped rails.

Swimming allowed everyone to cool off.  They had to swim out to a bouy and back.

Like in the real event, they finished with a run.  They were all winners so everyone received a gold medal (a gingerbread cookie with hard icing and gold sprinkles)

A great celebration of sport!