Ball Handling

We have containers tucked in various rooms around the house. These store toys, books and lots of balls so that they are on hand when we need them. This allows for little snippets of reading, threading, sorting etc and of course, ball handling throughout the day.

This suits the way their brain works at this age and stage. Frequent, varied, fun activities that require focus for short periods of time.

The Toddler in our family loves playing with balls. Being a boy, that is not so surprising. Before he came along, I was aware there would be some differences in the way my Preschooler - our daughter - and my Toddler would interact with the world at large.

What is surprising is the extent of the differences - especially when it comes to playing with the balls...and climbing (but more about that on a later post).

So here is how I plan to begin the development in this area - quite a bit sooner than anticipated.

Choose soft chest (kids) sized balls so that it requires two hands to hug it. Have many on hand to reduce the amount of time required to fetch the ball.

At this stage there is a lot of just ball handling. Hugging, lifting, chasing, lying on the ball etc.
1. Rolling comes next. Seated, with both legs out in the shape of a 'V'. Begin the roll with the ball in contact with the ground. Push it forward to roll it. Roll it to and fro.
2. Then rolling whilst standing - with the adult kneeling. Stand with legs in a 'V' shape. (ie. bottom half of the star shape - remember the 'Stars and Rockets' post?) Roll it to and fro.
3. Encourage moving towards the ball and receiving it in a chest hug in a scooping action.

The action of kicking and/or chest passing will be next...but that is all for now.

Move from one stage to the next when there is some consistency at successfully receiving and rolling the ball to the intended destination. Note that the above may take days or weeks to progress through.

Indeed within the course of a day......I consider it a good one if I cover just step 1.

Because, there is also a lot of this going on.....