Before winter break the infants were doing a lot of work with balls. When they came back for holidays, the educators noticed that this continued to be an interest so they added extra materials to the room to enhance this interest. One morning educator Michelle set up a long tube with a pan at the bottom and a bucket of balls. Arlo looked inside the tube first. Then he chose a ball and placed it in the tube. “Look,” educator Kiva said, “the ball came out the bottom.” Arlo leaned his body to the side so that he could see the ball. He pointed with a smile, picked up another ball and put that one into the tube. Later that day, Arlo brought one of the bigger balls to the tube and tried to place it in. “It looks like that one is too big,” Kivas said. “Try this ball,” she offered a smaller ball. With smile on his face, Arlo took the ball from Kiva and placed it down the tube. the next day when the tube was gone, Arlo and Theo were seen putting balls into the shelves and other toy buckets. This gave Kiva the idea to create a ball drop!
Kiva cut some holes into the top of a box and cut an opening in the front of it. She then set it out in the classroom and placed some balls in the bottom. Theo came over and placed his head over top of one of the holes. Kiva took a ball and placed it into one of the holes. Theo copied this action, putting his face in the hole so he could see where the ball went. “Where’s the ball?” Kiva asked. Theo pointed into the hole. “Look, it came out the bottom,” Kiva said. Theo continued to repeat these actions for several minutes. Then he decided to sit in the front opening of the ball drop. This made it a little tricky for the balls to drop into the front, so Kiva suggested that he stand beside the box instead. Gabriel came over for a turn. He decided to sit on his knees at first. After a few rounds of putting the balls in, Gabriel used the box as support to stand. This meant he had to bend over and stretch a little to pick up the balls from the bottom. He also decided to sit in the front of the box. When Eleanor came over to explore, Gabriel got out of the box and stood beside it again. Eleanor used the same technique to sturdy herself at the box. She would squat down to pick up the balls each time. When she placed a ball into the holes she would look at an educator with a smile and clap. “Yay,” Kiva cheered, “you got the ball into the hole!” The next day the ball drop was set out again. This time the infants decided to try throwing the balls. When the balls went into the holes they would put their hands up and celebrate. “Goal! Scoooore” the educators would cheer. This kept the infants engaged for an extended period of time at the end of the day. The ball drop will continue to be available for daily use in the infant room.
Based on these observations, it seems that the infants enjoy placing balls into holes or containers. They may also enjoy that the balls “hide” for a brief moment. There also seems to be an emerging interest in climbing in and out of boxes.
To continue this work, we may seek out other containers for the balls to be put in. We may also offer large boxes or containers for the infants to climb in and out of.
