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If Wimbledon inspires you to bring tennis into the classroom, perhaps some of these ideas will help.

First off, a bit of trivia: when were the Olympic Games last held at Wimbledon?

Well, London has hosted the Olympics twice before in 1908 and 1948, with tennis being played at Wimbledon at the ’08 games.

Then there’s some more ideas to explore in the classroom:

Why are tennis balls fuzzy? Hint: it’s about control with the racquet, more than just air resistance. And of course tradition: rubber was invented after tennis in the 1800s, so early tennis balls needed a soft covering. Have a look at Yahoo Answers. You could extend this and use our speed of the tennis ball experiment to compare a smooth with a new/rough ball.

Why are balls in other sports designed the way they are? Think about rugby versus footballs, or squash balls versus tennis balls.
Real Tennis – why is it not more popular, and what would it need to make a revival? (If you’ve never heard of real tennis, check out Real Tennis rules. If you have a Real Tennis court, or even a squash court near you, you could use it in our Geometry of a Tennis Court lesson.
How many left-handed winners have there been at Wimbledon – does being left-handed affect your ability to play tennis, or any other sport?

How did a 1907 murder feature Wimbledon in its history? (Read the full story here) Write a mystery that takes place at this year’s venue (or perhaps another sporting event).
What are Wimbledon profits used for, and why?

Explore simple machines by building a machine that will lift a tennis ball 50 centimetres, using: tennis ball , 2 plastic cups, 0.7m of string, broomstick, 50 pennies, cello tape, scissors, table, meter stick.

Why does Wimbledon have ‘official suppliers’? Why are they not called ‘sponsors’? Explore the role of sponsors at sporting events and their effect on athletes and supporters.

So, Wimbledon is upon us.

I, myself, like playing tennis. Not that I’m any good at it. I have a nasty tendency of standing still and not moving an inch when my tennis partner aims his serve to the furthest possible ‘in’ point away from where I am standing. He wants to know I won’t chase it down. I say it’s because a) he’s helping me and he should serve it where I want him to and b) I want to enjoy the game, which would require me to actually make contact with the ball and hit it back to him, which is highly unlikely to occur if I have to frantically run across the court and desperately flail at the ball wildly with one hand that’s outstretched as far as humanly possible. In the end, I know I am being a brat, but he does give in! But, I have fun and I learn, which is the point. And, I have started to love to watch the game (where once upon a time I thought tennis was about as exciting to watch as students writing exams!)

At this time of year, I mentally nominate celebrities I would like to see on court, who either a) you could see would really put their all into it or b) would really add some humour and extra entertainment!

What about you? Who would you like to see up against the likes of Federer or Nadal?

Jonathan Ross (who would both try and be humourous)?

How about Gordon Ramsay? So serious and intense.
Or Jo Brand? Likely to have an approach similar to mine.

How about the Obamas (what would they be like!)? And would Barack want to get snapped playing something elitist like tennis??

Do let us know!

We love the concept of using sport to bring ideas to life.  So, for some extra inspiration: explore the architectural styles of the town of Ascot; identify and describe the major events in Queen Elizabeth II’s reign in a story, poem, or video; art, advertising, and propaganda: analyze images and text in print advertisements for persuasive and propaganda techniques; design and math:  examine nine sport logos (Ascot, Euro 2008, Olympics …  for symmetry, and create an original logo using geometric shapes and symmetry); consider how equestrians create careers out of doing what they love, and explore hobbies and leisure-time activities that develop self-esteem and self-expression.   

I’ve been wondering why it is that horse-racing isn’t as popular as many other sports. Is it perhaps the fact that an animal is involved, and we subconsciously perceive the animal to be doing the work as opposed to the human, therefore we have little sense of involvement with the rider? Or is it the association with gambling? Royal Ascot does seem to set the nation alight in the summer, but let’s be honest, we’re interested in everything OTHER THAN the racing.

We love the hats, the fancy picnic concept, and of course the antics – Royal or otherwise (remember Diana and Fergie and the umbrellas?). But we don’t really seem to pay attention to the races themselves. Would we be more interested if the riders themselves were more glamourous, or had more glamourous lives (does anyone know a horse-racing WAG ?), as opposed to the audience members.

Would we be more interested if it was a team sport? Or perhaps it is a simple case of creating demand – if it was on TV more (other than on weekends when 9/10 families let their children monopolise the TV) we would learn more and therefore become greater supporters.

FYI – a lovely bit of trivia I like and always good to test the children — what is the only Olympic event where women and men compete head-to-head? The equestrian events!!

A few ideas for those of you stuck for new ideas about Euro 2008 in the classroom, here are a few of my kids’ favourites: making a football shaped cake can be a challenge. So too can making black icing; social studies … exploring football and soccer collectibles, what makes things ‘collectible’, how are prices determines, what could you start collecting now; footballs, of various shapes and sizes, are wonderful tools for exploring shapes and geometry; cultural differences: explore European versus North American ‘football’, discovering similarities, differences, and historical links; simple enough, why not change your maths worksheets to having football examples and symbols; maths: explore why an American football and a European football bounce in different ways, due to their shape.  How do other balls bounce, and why?  (Actually you can check out a few experiments on that topic at our Summer of Sport resource pages.)

I’ve been having a debate with my friends recently, about whether Euro 2008 would be any more interesting to us non-footy fans, if England had made it.  The consensus is, sadly, (I must say, my sample here is 90% women, and we’re being far too stereotypical in our views here) that we would have had some great WAG moments, if we had made it!  Surely, David would have earned some more caps and the Posh versus Colleen saga would have continued…   Posh would have shown us the latest designer ensemble that we could neither fit nor afford, and Colleen would model the one we could, but wouldn’t want to.   And we would have had some great fashion tips, in the guise of the latest animal print shell suit to buy.  Weirdly, the second most frequent comment was about goal celebrations.  Even my fellow yummy mummies remember Peter Crouch’s weird 1980’s style robot dance, and want to see more (though maybe that’s just perhaps because we think he and Abby are such a cute (if not amazingly gravitationally mis-matched) couple).  Men, on the other hand, seem quite interested in the actual line-up. Amazing!  Would Beckham get more caps? Would he score at all?  Would we have an amazing 16 year olds to suddenly be called up and impress the socks off everyone?  I’m not sure if I’m sad England’s not in it, or just non-plussed.   But I will admit, the kids love some of the bits of the official Euro 2008 website (euro2008.uefa.com) though we’ve had good fun developing our own board games that are WAY better than their rather dull memory game!

Are you starting to count down the days until the summer holidays?  If so, your class is probably even more likely to be drifting off into thoughts of Euro 2008 and beyond.
But all is not lost on the creative resource front.  Teachable is running a campaign this summer, to promote the benefits of using sports-themed lessons to teach everything from maths to history. With the usual great range of sports on this summer (football, tennis, etc), plus the Beijing Olympics, we believe now is the time to engage your class with topical presentations and activities.

We will be developing a few themed resources ourselves, under the Summer of Sport banner, but we would very much like to see more contributions in a similar vein. Read more about contributing here.
Alongside that we will be running a series of sports-themed competitions for our members. Watch this space for more!

We’re in the business of selecting the best resources for teachers to use, but we’ve seen a few duffers this month. So in the spirit of Ascot Week, we thought we’d run our own Donkey Derby: a race for all those resources which are a little less than thoroughbred!

It’s a close finish down the final furlong, but the results are…

In third place, and with a quite rightly anonymous trainer, we have Blank Sheet.
In second place, with a young American owner and trainer team, we have AP Biology.

I truly hope, as they claim, this didn’t get 3/5 in the real exam!
And in first place, with a great pedigree (but using some unusual training methods), is Perimeter Rap. As you wouldn’t hear at Ascot: ‘You go gurl!!’

‘Art’ was the single most popular search on Teachable in May / early June.  We only have a handful of Art resources at the moment, so any contributions in that area would be welcome.

After that the main searches were for science related resources:

• Cells
• Dinosaurs
• Age of the earth
• Analogue vs digital
• Capacitors
• Antarctica
• Global Warming
• Symmetry

We like to give our users what they want before they have to ask, so anyone with presentations or worksheets that cover these areas would be doing everyone a favour.