Before Five In A Row: The Yellow Ball

For our first week, we read The Yellow Ball by Molly Bang, which we happily found at our local library. It has great illustrations and was very different from any other book we had read so far, so I was interested to see what LittleBear's thoughts about the book would be. He loved looking for the ball in each picture and seemed to really enjoy the book each time we read it. We had four days of school planned which included activities from the Before Five In A Row book and also some of my own. Really, it was more like structured play time- we both had fun (mostly)!
Day 1-
Read Book
Yellow Yarn Ball Lacing Card
Yellow flag book

Yellow Sensory Bin

Go to grocery store for a yellow scavenger hunt. Buy lemons & make lemonade.

Day 2- Read book

Talk about Bible story: Luke 8:22-25 (Jesus calming the storm) using the Jesus Storybook Bible

Yellow Ball catch/throw cards

beach ball shutter book

Give Ben his own yellow ball & play games with it. Dribble ball with feet, stop, pass, etc.

Day 3- Read book
make a picture of yellow ball book cover with foam sheets

counting game with goldfish

Animal Classification cards

field trip to look at fish at pet store

Day 4- Read book...talk about the setting- about all the things we like to do at the beach, things we see, the ocean and what kinds of creatures live in the ocean.
make yellow ball prints using homemade paint

Alphabet Art Yellow Y

I think his favorite thing the whole week was the sensory bin (which I found out about through this blog) with beach gel clings, so we brought that back out every day. He also really enjoyed coloring the components of the flag book and liked doing the letter Y activity with the yellow yarn and double stick tape. He also did a good job for his first try with the lacing card.

His least favorite thing was making the lemonade (though he loved going to store and finding the yellow items- everyone in the store knew when he found something yellow). He also did not care for watching an animated video of the "Yellow Submarine" online. Our Yellow Ball prints with homemade paint came out a little differently than I planned. The paint was more of a gel type paint (I'm sure I bought the wrong thing for cornstarch flour) and LittleBear became very upset when it got on his hands (so I finished the painting for him).
We also worked on a magnetic fish puzzle from Michael's clearance section every day, which LittleBear loved.
Funny story time! We were talking about the beach (which is the setting for the book) and things people do at the beach and I mentioned that some people like to bury their feet in the sand. Well, LittleBear proceeded to empty the bin and stick his feet in, then cover them with rice. It was great!

For the grandmas out there and anyone else who wants to see the week in action, here's a photo/video gallery :)

Week 1- The Yellow Ball

Inspiration, Ideas and Resources came from the following:
Before Five In A Row manual
Delightful Learning
Homeschool Creations
Confessions of a Homeschooler
Homeschool Share
Lakeshore Learning
Our Homeschool Fun
Walking by the Way