BFIAR: Yellow Ball

Last week James and I read Yellow Ball by Molly Bang.  It's a simple story of a forgotten ball that drifts out to sea and has an adventure, then is found again by the little boy who lost it and taken back home.  At one point there is a thunderstorm and the ball tosses and turns dramatically on the waves.  James is simultaneously fascinated and terrified of thunderstorms right now, so I checked out a couple of books on thunderstorms from the library.  We read them along with Yellow Ball and he loved them!  All week he requested the thunderstorm books at naptime and bedtime.

It turned out to be a pretty busy week, so we had to squeeze things in here and there.  I introduced paint for the first time, which was a huge hit!  On Tuesday we read Yellow Ball and the books about thunderstorms.  We talked about storm clouds and painted thunderheads.  The first time we painted them I wasn't thinking and we used white paper.  White clouds on white paper = a very uninteresting painting!

He pretty much requested to paint thunderheads every day, so the next time we used blue paper.

Our letter for the week was Y, so he practiced tracing and also did a dot Y.

Love the look for concentration on his face!

In the book they show the ball from high and low and above and below.  We talked about what these terms mean and then practiced putting the yellow ball in those places.

We also practiced size sequencing with pictures of yarn balls.  He can easily identify the biggest and smallest, but needs a little help with the middle ones.  I gave him two at a time and let him pick which one was bigger.

That night at bedtime we read the story of Jesus in the storm in his storybook bible.  We talked about how the disciples got so scared, but Jesus stayed calm and he told the storm to be quiet.  Then we talked about how we don't ever need to be scared because Jesus is always with us and he promises he will help us.  

Wednesday we had BSF, so we didn't have much time to do anything.  When he woke up from his nap in the afternoon we got out our big yellow ball and played catch.  He uses the word catch for both throwing and catching, so we talked about the different terms.  He practiced with daddy.

Then he played with this paper version of throwing and catching.  It was a little hard to manipulate the ball on the string, so he wasn't very interested in it.

Thursday was interesting because Ethan didn't take a morning nap and was in the mix while we were trying to do our activities.  He kept himself occupied for a short while... and I mean short!  

He can be a bit of a monster when he doesn't get what he wants, but he sure is a cute monster!

James did some yellow ball prints with a small yellow sponge ball and yellow paint.  

We also got out the sensory bin.  Both boys loved this!  I dyed some rice yellow and threw in a couple of yellow toys.  It was a hit!

It didn't take long though for Ethan to start throwing all of the rice all over the foyer.  And then we put it away!

On Friday we worked on coloring, which James didn't have much of an interest in doing.  After painting, crayons were so unexciting!

He wanted to do playdoh, so I got out the yellow playdoh and some of his letter cookie cutters.  We made some "Y's" and then he just did his own thing.  Playdoh can keep him busy for quite a while!

He played in his sensory bin again.  

Later in the day he helped me make sugar cookies, which we called our "yellow ball" cookies.  We iced them with yellow icing and had a snack of yellow ball cookies and lemonade.  

This face sums it up. Totes delightful!

That was our week with Yellow Ball.  I loved this book and will look forward to doing it again with Ethan!