Experience Olympic curling with your kids

Find basic information about curling and about the Canadian athletes who are in Sochi competing for medals. Look to the right for links to interviews and for information on how your kids can get into curling themselves, including how they can curl at home.

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If your kids enjoy being active and playing strategy games, they’ll definitely get a kick out of watching curling – fans refer to it as “chess on ice”.

Curling dates back to the 1500s in Scotland when people played by sliding river rocks along frozen ponds. In 1838, Edinburgh’s Grand Caledonian Curling Club formalized the rules of the game. Through Scottish emigration, the sport started to become popular in other countries, especially in Canada.

Canadians were known for using iron curling stones – made from the hubcaps of gun carriages! Curling was demonstrated at the first winter Olympics in 1924, but it didn’t become an official medal sport until the 1998 Olympic Winter Games in Nagano, Japan.

How cool is this?

• Curling is also known as “the roaring game” because of the “roaring” sound the stone makes as it travels down the ice.

Here’s how to watch curling

• Two teams of four people take turns sliding curling stones across the ice towards a target.
• Sweepers sweep the ice in front of the stone to help it move a greater distance and to influence its path on the ice.
• The curler can make the stone “curl” in a gentle curve by giving it a slow spin.
• The team with the stone closest to the centre of the target gets to count points.
• The team with the most points at the end of 10 “ends” wins the game.

Here are the types of curling played at the Olympic Winter Games

• Men’s
• Women’s

Cheer for Canada’s curlers

• Team Brad Jacobs and Team Jennifer Jones
• Event schedule
• Watch on CBC-TV: broadcast schedule