How to Throw an Olympic Themed Back-to-School Party

I don't usually post many pictures of our family on here (I leave that up to my daughters blog) but I just couldn't resist--so even though it was last month here they are:

We started the morning off decorating our special 'first day of school pancakes'. Then after we filled our school boxes and browsed through and labeled our new schoolbooks, we proceeded with our first day of school party of which the theme this year was borrowed from the Olympics, inspired by Brenda (thank you for all your help!)

Here are our Olympic torches.

We painted Olympic rings and hung them in our new homeschool room.

We tried our hand at our first-ever lapbooks.

We cut and pasted---not bad for trying to show six children how to do it all at one time.

This flap opens up and there are surprise pockets underneath. Isn't that neat?

Some of us slept through it all.

Then our outdoor games began. This is the high jump for the smaller children, can you see the rod between the chairs? (Don't mind the wilting tomato plants in the background)

The twins also thought they would try their hand at this event.

Stephen took our Olympics very seriously as you can see. He was wearing his 'Michael Phelps' shades.

Here is the javelin competition. We substituted large branches.

We also had relay-race events.

And we couldn't forget the gymnastics category!

"Stephen, are you okay?"

For gymnastics they had to do two tumble rolls, two cartwheels and end up in the 'splits position'. I think that was the funniest event for me to watch! We were all in stitches!

In the end everyone received their Olympic medals...and were all richly awarded with various gifts and goodies!

Thank you for viewing of first day of school pictures!