Happy Summer Ya All! Mine is almost a week in! We are having fun swimming, parking, and visiting friends and family we don’t normally see in the winter months.
I bet you all have a Beach Ball or two lying around? Maybe you even play with it at the beach or at the pool? Have you ever looked at it and thought… “WOW, we could use that to learn!”????? You know I have. I recently was asked to write a few articles for a local magazine and one of them was all about the learning power of the Beach Ball!!! Yes the beach ball!!! Here is my article spiced up a bit for my Teaching Heart Visitors. Hope you find it useful!
Have some fun learning this summer for only a dollar. The dollar stores have out all of their summer fun treats; like, BEACH BALLS! Go grab a few beach balls and start some fun summer learning. Here are just a few ideas you can use with your beach balls.
1.) Write out the numbers on the top and bottom sections with a marker. Throw the ball gently to a child and they have to add the numbers where there thumbs are. For the younger child, they would just read you the numbers their thumbs are on.
2.) Another game is to sit in a circle and count to a specific number. Whoever says that number has to go to the center of the circle. Keep going till there are two left. Similarly, you can do this with counting by 2′s, 5′s, 10′s, days of the week, months, etc. Easy and quick and the kiddos like it so much that they don’t even realize they are learning!
3.) See how many times you and your child can throw it to each other without dropping it. Set a timer for one minute to see how many times you can pass the ball without dropping it.
4.) Like musical chairs, but with a beach ball. Pass the ball around the circle, when the music stops the person holding the ball is out!
5.) Write your child’s site words on the ball. Throw the ball to your child; whatever their right hand is on is the word they need to read.
6.) Masking tape one Princess Polly Pocket for each child all around a beach ball. Turn on your child’s favorite music and pass the beach ball around. When the music turns off, whoever has the ball gets to rip off a Princess and keep it! Then that child can sit down and the rest can continue playing until all the Princesses are gone. Great for parties — or for anytime special occasions.
7.) Check out a beach ball book from your local library and let the reading fun begin. Some of my favorites include; The Beach Ball by D.J. Steinberg and Liz Conrad, Clifford The Big Red Dog: The Missing Beach Ball by Sonali Fry, and Bernie the Beach Ball Bounces Back by Lois Bernzott Boccio
8.) Amazon sells Multicolored beach balls that make learning fun and reading concepts tangible. One ball offers six open-ended phrases and the other has six questions to reinforce comprehension skills. Includes a resource guide.
Similarly – CARSON DELLOSA FAMILY FUN BEACH BALLS look fun too. How was your day? often gets you little more than a Fine, but toss in a beach ball and children are happy to open up. These two Family Fun Beach Balls are both 10 inches in diameter, and include 62 sentence starters or questions.
9.) Beach Ball Coloring!! After coloring the picture have your child dictated a story about the picture. Then have hime or her reread the story they dictated.
10.) Beach Ball Color a Rhyme (fun for summer learning too!) – Page one is yours to read. Give page two to the students in your class. Read each one and have students volunteer the color word that fits the rhyme. Then the class may color in the correct number of colored balls on their page. When you are finished reading each little rhyme, you can evaluate how well your students were listening by being sure they colored the balls the correct color. All materials need to make this center are found in the End of the Year Packet
11.) Top off the learning with a healthy snack! This beach ball pizza from Miley Minutes looks… Mmmmmm!!! Use fresh fruit to decorate a large sugar cookie to look like a beach ball.
OR for an unhealthy but yummy one, check this out! Or see the Cake Pops Below… These are from Beki Cook’s Cake Blog.
Hopefully these eleven ideas will help you see your beach ball in a new light!
Be sure to check out our beach themed page here!
You also might like my guest post about MAgnetic Letters over at the OCB. Click here to read that!
Colleen Gallagher – Teaching Heart
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