Yellow Ball

We had so much fun this week with our Yellow Ball adventures. Rhea has enjoyed the book so much that she would not let me return it to the Library and we still read it every day. Yellow Ball by Molly Bang is about a ball that accidentally gets swept out to sea. The artwork was beautiful as we are shown illustrations of the ball from different angles. The Yellow Ball goes out to sea, gets stuck in a storm, and then makes it back to shore where it is found by a little boy. We really enjoyed reading this book and took the opportunity to throw in a unit on different sports that use balls.

Stephen's sequence and sort project. I had not planed on doing the elaborate project that he created, but he asked to use paper fasteners for his sequencing project. We of course then needed to give it the appropriate decorations.

Stephen's Basketball book and other worksheets
Stephen created a mini-book for each of the sports that we talked about this week. Here is a sample from the Basketball book. Other books included dot-to-dots, mazes, writing and coloring pages.
Stephen's Soccer Book

Our Yellow Ball adventures at the pool where much anticipated all week long. The first picture is of the kids waiting in the dressing room with their yellow ball in hand. We then took a picture of the ball floating away. Stephen talked all day about making a wave for the ball just like in the book. You can see that picture on the bottom left. I will include a larger picture too since it was so important to him. We started to take pictures from different angles, but the lifeguards turned on the cool fountains and Mommy's project was over. Oh well, we at least had a great day throwing our yellow balls at each other and playing in the water while it was snowing outside. Did I mention that it was a heated pool?
The kids looked through Daddy's album of old baseball cards. Stephen then made his own Baseball card and placed it in his lap book next to his Baseball mini-book.
We learned the rules to Baseball just in time before it snowed again, as I mentioned before. Yes, snow at the end of April. Everyone does well at hitting the ball, but we have never talked about the rules. Stephen has been to several baseball games with Daddy, but I think they pretty much eat junk food and heckle the batters the whole time. We began with definitely the bases and running after we hit the ball. We then explained that the base is a safe place where Daddy can't tag you "out" followed by a short lesson in "stealing" the bases and running towards "home". It only took one demonstration and Stephen was hooked!

The Wind up

The Hit

Safe on First

The Steal

Score!!!

Rhea prefers Golf.
....and then wacks Daddy

Other Go-alongs
The Ball Book by Margaret Hillert and Balls by Melanie Davis Jones- goes through each ball sport

Let's Play Ball by Pam Zinnemann-Hope - Very simple

Kenny and the Little Kickers by Claudio Marzollo - Favorite - confidence/self esteem

Soccer Sam by Jean Marzollo - Mulit cultural

Swish by Michael Chesworth - Basketball

Apple Batter by Deborah Turney Zagwyn - Baseball - great for fall