Rolling Around!

One of my little ones seemed to be fascinated with balls and things that rolled around.  I did a bit of reading and wondered if she was maybe showing a rotational schema so planned experiences for her that extended her interest.  It lasted for several months but here are a few of the things we tried:

• A collection of different balls to explore.
• A collection of vehicles to roll and push.
• Wooden planks to roll vehicles down.
• Guttering to roll balls down.
• Differently sized tubes with differently sized balls to explore which balls fitted down which diameter tubes.
• Painting with balls in a tray.
• Painting by rolling toy vehicles through paint and then across paper.
• Enveloping balls with playdough.
• making marks with balls in playdough.
• Putting a soft abll of playdough out with a hard ball and exploring the differences.
• Rolling balls to knock over skittles.
• Throwing/ kicking/ rolling/ bouncing/ catching balls.
• trying to bounce different types of balls.
• Playing with balls in water, dropping them to make splashes, and patting them.
• Looking for balls in the world around us (fruit, the tops of gates, door handles, top of the spinnaret on the mosque).
• A collection of unusual balls such as ball of string, pom-poms, stuffed socks, taped-up paper balls - you could hide them in a box full of shredded paper for little ones to find.

My collection of balls at the moment includes tennis balls, golf balls, a wooden decorative ball from Dunelm, very large glass marbles, and foam balls from a skittle set.  I really like these and these from lakeshore learning.  It's an American company but I can't find anything like it available in the UK, and with exchange rates they might be quite reasonable!