Yellow Ball is one of the books from the excellent Before Five in a Row curriculum. This book screamed out to be used to learn more about the beach So I collected any other FIAR books that were vaguely beach themed along side a nice collection of specifically themed beach books:
Yellow Ball: Special 1-2-1 Activities
Making Sand Dough
Each morning I put out some play dough at their table. They both really enjoy play dough and having different themed cutters and molds each week keeps it fresh and exciting. This week we made sand dough (4 cups play sand 3 cup flour 1 1/4 cup water 1/4 cup oil- mix together thoroughly), to go along with our beach theme and I let the little ones have some of our beach toys:
Painting Pebbles and Egg Casts
A4 and I decided to paint a few of the pebbles we picked up at the beach and later on in the year we will turn them into Christmas presents:
Making Shell Shaped Soap
I picked up this soap making kit from the local charity shop to go along with Yellow Ball:
£1 at a charity shop, never been use
I created an activity tray for them to surprise Abigail with. I wanted to help her to make some soap to give as presents:
Making a Sandy Desert
Becca and I had lots of fun making this sandy dessert. First Becs made some simple yellow angel delight:
She then chopped up Oreo biscuits and plain vanilla biscuits to make the sand:
After we had finished those she kept saying ‘more, mummy, more!’ so I quickly gathered the supplies together to make some edible sand for a snack I had planned later in the week…
Making Edible Sand
Becca divided some Fruit Loops into their different colours:
And then used the grinder to finely chop them into coloured sand:
These were then set aside for a snack activity I had planned for later in the week.
Yellow Ball: Tray Activities Together
Making a Bouncy Yellow Ball
Our main tray activity to go along with Yellow Ball was making bouncy balls. We had attempted some home made ones in our science on Monday using borax and glue (posting about that tomorrow). These bouncy balls were made using a kit we had purchased from Amazon, and it used some sort of powder, water and the molds provided. The result was a very bouncy ball:
Whilst this activity was quick, easy and fun which is perfect for a tray activity, the polymer bouncy balls they made from scratch at the beginning of the week were a much bigger hit. B2 even hid hers under her top and went for a nap with it and it half melted and stuck fast. She lost some clothes to the bin that day!!
Coloured Sand Play
Another activity I had planned was for some sand play. I thought it would be fun to colour some sand but the play sand we bought was too dark in colour to be dyed successfully. So we opted for some fake sand in the form of salt, which we first dyed in zip lock bags using food dye:
The twins wanted in on this one, so I cut out loads of black ocean themed shaped and let them at it:
Adding the sand:
And the final products:
Ocean Themed Magnetic Puzzle
This pretty much speaks for itself!
Yellow Ball: Games or group activities
Playing with a Yellow Ball
We played with the yellow ball just like in the book:
Yellow Balls: Fun Snacks
Crab Croissants
We made crabs from croissants, strawberries, chocolate spread and mini marshmallows:
Sand Puddings
A Fishing Snack Tray
Edible Sand Art
Beach Themed Muffin Tin Meal (including a Yellow Ball!)
Upper row: mini ice cream cone, mini blue choc chip sea bed with a melon jelly fish and blue jelly and an orange boat with tortilla sail. Muffin decorated with tiny star fish and cut out melon fish.
Yellow Ball: Young People at Play
In our one hour activity slot in the morning we made:
- An ocean in a bottle
- A bouncy yellow ball
- We investigated beach finds
- We explored an ocean sensory box
You can read about these activities here.