The simple ball can be used as an imaginative tool when helping special needs children learn. Here are some ideas which you can use with your special needs homeschool students.
1. Roll the ball over the limbs of the child – This allows your special needs student to understand the texture of the material and the way the ball feels against their bare skin. Once you have showed them how to roll the ball give it to them to do it for themselves. Use a number of balls made of different material and different sizes to get the child familiar with them all.
2. Hide and seek – Get them to hunt for a ball in a specified area. You could use one of those balls with blinking lights so that they get a good visual sensory clue about where to begin hunting for the ball.
3. Dodge Ball – use soft fabric covered balls for this game. Make sure that they are told that the head and shoulders is off limits. Mark out a circle on the floor to ensure that they know where they have to stand. You can invite friends over to play as well. The activity and socialization process will both do wonders for the child.
4. Play nine pins – stack up empty bottles, or if you have pins use them and allow the homeschool student to knock them down. They will learn to control the ball with increasing skill as they practice rolling it to knock down the pins.
5. Slide down the slope – Mark out three distinct sections on a cardboard in different colour. Now lean it against a piece of furniture and form the slope. The children get to slide the ball from the top of the slope one at a time and the others have to guess which section of the slope it will come down from.
6. Hot potato – the ball is called a hot potato and must not stay in the hands of a single person for too long. As soon as the person catches it they must shout out the words hot potato and launch it in the air for the next person to catch.
