We will learn how people use balls, what they are made of, what is inside them, and how high they can bounce. We will be using thinking skills to investigate, ask questions, solve problems, make predictions, and test our ideas!

Exploring Balls at Home

• Make a collection of all the balls you have in the house!

• Spend time with your child, playing with balls of all shapes, types, and sizes, such as playground balls, tennis balls, ping-pong balls, Koosh® balls, volleyballs, baseballs, footballs, and marbles. Talk about what the balls are made of, whether they are heavy or light, and whether they are big or little.

• Wonder aloud with your child to encourage his or her thinking about balls. For example, you might ask, “I wonder what’s inside a tennis ball. I wonder how far you can throw a foil ball, a beach ball, or a tennis ball. How can we find out?”

• Help your child use all of his or her senses when playing with balls. You might ask, “What does it look like? Feel like? Sound like? Smell like?”

• See how many types of balls you can find around the house and in your neighborhood.

Day 1

Question of the Day: Have you ever been to a store that sells balls?

Discussion: Discuss the question of the day. Use your ball collection and items from your home to set up a sporting goods store! Take turns playing the role of the customer and the store employees.

Day 2

Question of the Day: Can you make your body into a ball?

Discussion: Use your phone or a camera to take pictures of your ball collection and/or other spheres you find around your home. Print the pictures to make a book or create a digital book on https://bookcreator.com about your ball collection or sphere hunting!

Day 3:

Question of the Day: How do we use balls for exercise?

Discussion: Talk about how you use balls to exercise, or share memories of games you played with balls as a child.

Day 4:

Question of the Day: What’s your favorite thing to do with balls?

Discussion: Marble Painting: We know that balls can be used for fun in games and for exercise, but did you know that we can also make art with balls? Using small balls, such as rubber balls or marbles, create marble paintings with your child! Materials needed: small balls, paint, paper, tray with sides or bin. Place a piece of paper into a tray or bin so it lays flat on the bottom. Dip a small ball into one color of paint and place it onto the paper. Tilt the tray/bin so the ball rolls around and creates tracks on the paper. Repeat with different colors and enjoy!

Day 5:

Question of the Day: What kind of animals play with balls?

Discussion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNGn9QpRNuI Watch A Ball for Daisy by Chris Raschka on mute and use the pictures to tell the story together! Talk about the game “fetch” and ask, “do you think other animals can play fetch?”

Day 1

Question of the Day: How do you think a ball would move if it were floating in water?

Discussion: The Force of Water: Show your child the page of The Three Billy Goats Gruff with rushing water. Talk about how the force of the water was so strong that it carried the troll away. Ask, “do you think water can move a ball?” Record your child’s predictions, and test them using your ball collection and a bucket of water or the bathtub!

Day 2

Question of the Day: Which ball game do you like best?

Discussion: Sports: Talk about the question of the day. Discuss any sports that family members have played. Encourage your child to ask their family members questions about the sport, e.g., how he started playing, what she does with the ball in the sport. Ask the family member to demonstrate how the ball is moved in the sport, e.g. dribbled, thrown, or kicked. Record their questions and their family member’s responses. Say, “in any sport, we need muscles to move a ball.” Ask the family member to demonstrate and describe how he or she keeps his or her muscles strong to participate in the sport.

Day 3:

Question of the Day: Can you make a ball?

Discussion: Using our senses to explore balls: Gather several balls made of different materials, e.g. a rubber ball, hollow plastic ball, yarn ball, beach ball, cotton ball. Say, “sometimes we can figure things out by using our senses. What senses can we use to try to find out what these balls are made of?” Encourage the children to include words such as listen, smell, taste, touch and look in their responses. Put one ball at a time in a mystery bag or box. Give your child a chance to put a hand in the bag, use his or her sense of touch, and describe the way the ball feels. Repeat with the other balls! Record your child’s descriptive words.

Day 4:

Question of the Day: What do you think is inside these balls?

Discussion: What do you think is inside a ball? Say, “we were able to use our sense of touch to feel the outside of a ball and talk about what it is made of on the outside. But what do you think is inside a ball? Record your child’s answers. Introduce the words hollow and solid. Show objects that allow your child to see a hollow inside and a solid inside. Refer to the question of the day, and show your child the collection of balls. Ask the children to predict whether each ball is hollow or solid. Sort the balls accordingly.

Day 5:

Question of the Day: Do you think a bubble is a ball?

Discussion: Hollow and Solid: Look at the chart that you made about hollow and solid balls. Ask, “why do you think some balls are solid and some balls are hollow? How would a ball that is hollow move differently if it were solid?” Encourage your child to roll, kick, bounce, or throw hollow and solid balls. Encourage them to notice any differences between those experiences. Discuss and record your child’s discoveries. Refer to the question of the day. Ask, “what is inside a bubble?”

Day 1

Question of the Day: Do all balls roll?

Discussion: Do all balls roll? Ask your child, “do all balls roll?” Follow up by asking, “do you think some balls roll faster than others?” Record your child’s answers, and have your ball collection available for your child to test. Before your child rolls the balls, have them make predictions. Make a chart to record which balls roll the farthest. After you finish testing each ball, ask “I wonder why the ____ ball rolled the farthest?”

Day 2

Question of the Day: (Find a safe spot in your home, maybe with a rug!) How can we make our bodies roll?

Discussion: Force and rolling: Children can experiment rolling their bodies in different ways, such as pencil rolls. In a safe spot with lots of space, your child can lie on their backs with their arms overhead, palms together, like a pencil. From there, they can begin rolling. Ask, “How did you make your body roll? What do you think it takes to make balls roll?” Help your child notice that rolling an object takes some kind of force, such as the force from their muscle. Experiment by rolling balls in the ball collection. Encourage children to experiment by exerting different amounts of force on the balls- pushing lightly, then with more force. How does this change how far the ball rolls?

Day 3:

Question of the day: Do you think you can roll a pancake?

Discussion: Shape and Rolling: Give your child a small amount of play-doh or clay. Ask, “what could you do to make the clay roll?” Then ask them to make it flat like a pancake. Ask, “can you make a pancake shape roll? Why or why not?” Show your child several flat, circular objects of various sizes made out of various materials, such as CDs, lids, construction paper circles, or a magnetic letter O. Ask, “Do you think the objects that are round like a pancake will roll?” Record and test their predictions. Help the children draw the conclusion that the objects that are round like a ball or a sphere can roll.

Day 4:

Question of the Day: What is a ramp? How could we create a ramp at home?

Discussion: Height and Rolling: Question of the Day: What is a ramp? How could we create a ramp at home?

Discussion: Height and Rolling: Make a low ramp. Ask, “do you think balls will roll faster and farther if we use a ramp?” Use the ball collection to experiment with how fast and how far balls roll when they are rolled from ramp. Say, “I wonder what would happen if I raised the top of my ramp higher!” Experiment with holding the ramp at different heights and see if that changes how far the balls roll. Make comparisons using words such as “fast,” “faster” and “fastest.” Record your results on a chart.

Day 5:

Question of the Day: Choose two balls. Ask: “Which ball is heavier?” How do you know?

Discussion: Weight and rolling: Say, “I wonder if how heavy a ball is will change how far it rolls!” Work together to sort the ball collection by weight. You can use a scale or you can estimate. Make predictions about which ball will roll the farthest. Using one ramp, take turns rolling each ball. Measure how far each ball rolls, using string, math tools, a ruler or a measuring tape. Record the results and make conclusions about which balls roll farther- heavy balls or light balls!

Day 1

Question of the Day: Do you think all balls bounce?

Discussion: Which Balls Will Bounce? Say, "I wonder which ones will bounce best. Let's find out!” Hold up each ball and ask, "Do you think this ball will bounce well?" Let your child test some balls out. Be sure to include some balls that won’t bounce well, e.g., cotton ball, orange, or football. After testing each ball, have your child re-sort the balls based on bounciness! Count how many balls bounced, and how many did not.

Day 2

Question of the Day: Is your head bigger or smaller than this ball? Have your child compare the size of their head to different balls in their collection!

Discussion: Height and Bounciness. Talk about the question of the day and recall the previous day's experience. Continue exploring bounciness. Encourage your child to make and test predictions. Allow your child to stand on a low chair and drop a bouncy ball at the same time that you or a sibling standing on the floor drops another bouncy ball (two of the same kind is best if you have it!). Ask, “what did you notice about the balls? Which one bounced more? Which one bounced higher? I wonder why?” Repeat this activity with other types of balls. Encourage your child to draw conclusions about height and bounciness and record their ideas on a chart!

Day 3

Question of the day: Do footballs bounce?

Discussion: Shape and Bounciness. Reintroduce the term “sphere” to describe balls and point out that a football is not a sphere. Say, "I wonder if the football will still bounce, even if it’s not a sphere!" Experiment by bouncing a football or another non-spherical ball alongside a spherical ball. See which one bounces higher and say “I wonder why some balls bounce higher than others!” Encourage your child to draw conclusions about how shape impacts bounciness. Have your child draw a picture of the balls that bounced, and the ones that did not.

Day 4

Question of the Day: Do heavy balls bounce?

Discussion: Weight and Bounciness. Gather a collection of heavy and light balls. Invite your child to hold each ball and describe its weight. Encourage your child to make a prediction about each ball’s bounciness. Test the predictions and record findings for each ball. Count how many times each ball bounces. Help the child draw conclusions about how the weight of balls affects their bounciness.

Day 5

Question of the Day: How can you make balls bounce?

Discussion: Force and Bounciness. Choose a ball from your collection. Ask your child to drop it from waist height and count how many times it bounces. Record this on a chart. Then, ask your child to bounce the ball, using some force! See how many times it bounces now, and record it on the chart. Repeat with as many balls as you’d like! Ask, “When did the balls bounce more? When you just dropped them, or when you pushed them down?” Chart and compare how adding force made the ball bounce more times. You can further extend the experiment by wondering aloud, “I wonder if you also changed how high it bounced! Let’s try again!”

Day 1

Question of the Day: Which is your favorite ball?

Discussion: Types of Balls: Show your child a few different types of balls. Ask your child to describe the balls. You can record their ideas. Explain to your child: "this week we will study a collection of balls and explore all your ideas about balls. Let's see what type of ball you like playing with best.”

Day 2

Question of the Day: Is your ball bigger or smaller than this one? Have your child choose a ball from the collection. Have a small ball ready to compare it to!

Discussion: Share a Ball: Invite your child to talk about their collection. Refer to the question of the day as your child shares about their ball collection. Work together to organize the balls by size.

Day 3

Question of the Day: Hold up a ball and a CD or a flat disk. Are they the same or different? Use the word sphere to describe a ball.

Discussion: What Can We Do With Balls: Ask, "what can we do with balls?" Show your child a few examples to help them get started. Record your child's responses. At some point during free play tell your child: "I need you to help me think of a way to organize the ball collection today." Invite your child to think of a way to organize, display, and categorize the ball collection. Some categories might include sports balls, balls used as tools or in machines, decorative balls, balls found in nature, or edible balls. Have your child help make the signs for their chosen categories.

Day 4

Question of the Day: Collect the balls you have or any small objects and put them in a jar or bowl and ask: Does the guessing jar/bowl have more or fewer than 10 balls? How can you tell?

Discussion: What Do We Know About Balls? Say, "We're going to write everything we already know about balls so we can remember. What do you know about balls?" Record your child's ideas. Find a new way to organize the ball collection!

Day 5

Question of the Day: How many times can you bounce this ball?

Discussion: What Do We Want to Find Out About Balls? Say, "We already know a lot of things about balls. Let's think now about what we want to find out about balls." Make a list called, "What do we want to find out about balls?" Model Questioning- For example, you can show them a big beach ball and a small, heavy ball and wonder aloud about their weight. Or show them a ball from the playground that is deflated and wonder aloud what happened to it. Record their questions. Refer back to your question about circles vs spheres. Wonder aloud, "Are all balls spheres?"