SNOWBALL FIGHT!!!

January is such a fun month for the young and young at heart!  If you live in colder climates like I do, we have SNOW much fun this time of year with wintery activities!  Head off cabin fever and bring some wintery fun into the classroom or home with this novel activity!

Most of the preschoolers that I have worked with over the years have communication delays.  Several years ago a speech therapist shared this fun activity with my class to help them develop their oral motor skills.  Now that I use Conscious Discipline I am always looking for ways to help my students learn to control their breath, I use this activity for that purpose too!

Begin by gathering a group of children (and adults) around a table.  Have everyone get down on their knees so their chins rest on the table. 

Grab a snowball or two (ping pong balls) and let the fun begin!  Encourage each child to take a nice deep breath and blow the ball across the table to their friends.  They better pay attention or else they might get hit by a snowball right upside the face!  No worries though, these snowballs are harmless!   

We encourage the children to put their hands below the table or behind their back so they aren't tempted to use them.  Our goal is to keep the snowball on the table without touching it with our hands!  As you can see, they often use their hands anyways!  LOL!!!

For some added fun, you could make some obstacle courses for our little snowballs.  You could let the children build some "hills" that they could try blowing the balls up and down.  You could make some tunnels out of paper towel tubes to blow the snowballs through the tunnel.  You could also turn this into a hockey game and let the children use bendable straws and make some goals to try blowing the balls into the goal with their "hockey sticks".  There are lots of fun ways you can ward off the winter blahs with a ping pong ball and a little creativity!  What other ideas can you come up with?

Have fun and make sure you stop by my blog for lots more fun winter activities to do with your little ones in the next few weeks!  Keep shining!!  Jenny Spencer, Conscious Discipline Certified Instructor  (Ignite Learning LLC)