I found some tennis balls at a curbside garage sale today. They were free so I took them. What can I use them for? I don't need them on the bottom of chairs in my room because my room has carpet on the floor.
I was going to say recess, but that may encourage that wall ball game where you peg others if they don't catch the ball. He he.
Way to score something free! I'll be thinking. Could you label the balls with letters, and play a multiple choice review game with them? I'm not sure how many you have, but you could put a red a on one, red b on one, red c on one, red d on one, blue a on one, etc. to make a set of abcd for each team. Then read a review question, and the team has to TOSS the ball into the trash can/container of the answer they think is correct. You can pull the balls out and see which team guessed which answer by the color of the answer.
I have seen a teacher write numbers on them for an outdoor game. You throw the balls onto the ground and tell the students a math fact, they then have to solve the problem in their head and run around and find the answer on the ball.
Alaskan baseball! http://www.ultimatecampresource.com/site/camp-activity/alaskan-baseball.html We use tennis balls for most of our field day games - they work well for steal the bacon, alaskan baseball, just about everything!
We use tennis balls to practice fine motor skills. Cut a slit about 1/3 the way around a ball and then put a dozen little things in it. Use a tweezers to remove them and then put them back. We sort nuts and bolts, beads, tiles, etc this way. They build fine motor muscles and it's self contained.
Put strong magnets inside two of the tennis balls and let your students see what molecules can look like. Throw the balls up in the air and let them connect and twirl!
If you have a smartboard you can use them to write on the board so your wrist isn't against the board
In music class, I gave the kids tennis balls to beat out different meters. 2/4= bounce, catch; 3/4=bounce, catch, pass to other hand; etc.
Oh--if you can trust your class, you can use them for paired spelling review instead of bean bags...(toss and switch off saying the letters to spell the words).
Kids can sit on the ground with a partner with their legs apart. Roll the ball to each other saying the alphabet or counting to 100 or another skill you are working on.
