Mr. Ball activities are great for working on:
- Hand strength – helps develop the arches of the hand
- Pincer grasp – picking up objects with thumb and fingertips
- Translation skills – moving objects from the palm to the fingertips
- Bilateral skills – using both hands together
How to make Mr. Ball:
- Make a mouth by cutting a slit in the middle of a tennis ball using an utility knife (be careful!)
- Decorate your Mr. Ball with googly eyes, hair, anything you want!
- To make the activity easier – make the slit larger
- To make the activity harder – make the slit shorter
Activity ideas:
- Feed Mr. Ball by squeezing his mouth open with one hand and feeding him objects with the other hand:
- Coins
- Pom poms
- Marbles
- Buttons
- Beads
- Dried beans
- Pieces of paper
- Make Mr. Ball talk and play with other Mr. Balls
Ways to change the activity:
- If it is too hard – place your hand on top of the childs and help them squeeze the ball
- To work on translation skills – have the child pick up more than one object and feed Mr. Ball one object at a time
- To work on colours – ask the child to pick up a certain colour object and feed it to Mr. Ball
- To work on letters – use letter tiles/magnets and ask the child to feed Mr. Ball a certain letter
- To work on counting – ask the child to feed Mr. Ball a certain number of objects
- To add a resistive component – hide the coins in putty and have the child take it out before feeding it to Mr. Ball