Fun Review Activities – Beach Balls and Wheels

Today we're going to talk about how beach balls and cardboard wheels can be fun and effective learning tools for the middle school classroom. Who knew? Ellie, don't you have a great blog post on beach balls?

I do have a blog post about using beach balls. Yes, it's pretty short. So it's a quick read if anybody wants to read it. I love using different ways to practice and review concepts in the classroom. And one of those ways was using those beach balls. And another way was using cardboard wheels. But we'll talk about that in a few minutes. Let's let's think about the beach balls first. Did you use them too?

I did use beach balls? Yes.

Do you want to tell us what you did with them?

You go first.

All right, I usually use it for just kind of quick 5-10 minute reviews here and there. Maybe when we had extra minutes at the end of class, or we were getting ready for a test or something like that. Just a quick way to review. So I had a whole bunch of them. And I would put things on them like basic math facts. But then I also put exponents, exponential expressions. So you had the base and the exponent on there, I put things for a fraction decimal percent fraction, decimal conversions, for measurement conversions, square roots, math, vocabulary, equations to solve algebraic expressions to translate. So I put a whole bunch of different things on the different beach balls so that we could constantly be reviewing that kind of stuff. And the way we used it was we would get maybe into a circle or if our desks were spread out decently enough, we would just throw the ball back and forth. And depending on what was on the beach ball, students might choose both thumbs if it was math facts, and they would see what was under each thumb that landed on the beach ball, what the thumb landed on. And then they would maybe multiply those things together. If it was division facts, they would divide those two numbers. If there weren't two things that were needed, then I would just pick Okay, what did your index finger land on? Or what did your pinky land on? And what did your thumb land on? And then they would have to answer those questions.

I have questions. Did you have like one ball that was all exponents? And one ball that was like algebraic equations? Or did you like mix the balls?

I had one for each of those different things. So I bought like a pack of a dozen or whatever. And I just filled each of the balls with the different concepts.

So yours were actual beach balls. And you wrote all over them?

I wrote on them. Yeah.

With like Sharpie?

Yes. Because other stuff would smudge. Okay, so yeah, I would write with Sharpie.

Cool. Yeah, I used commercial beach ball type objects. Yeah. Okay. I mean, they felt like a beach ball. But they didn't look like a traditional beach ball colors and stuff, okay. I just bought them at the teacher store, by us. And they would be similar to what you've, you've described, where it would be all algebraic expressions, or all fractions. And I also had some for geography. So they'd be like, all 50 states and capitals, okay, or all South American countries, or something like that. And so we would play with them in social studies. And in math class as well.

I do like the idea though, if writing them on yourself, of mixing it up, and maybe put an exponential expression here and a square root here and, you know, other types of problems.

it's more of a spiral review.

I use them, I think, also in language arts to review literary element questions. So if we were doing a book review, or we had a novel study, that type of thing, we could use the beach ball and talk about the characters or the setting or the plot, and they each thing would be written in a different section of the beach ball. And so when they caught that they would tell us something different maybe that someone else had not already shared, or if we had done book studies and different groups of students had read different books, they could tell us about their particular book that they had read and so that way, everybody's not giving the same answer to the same few questions that are on the beach ball, but we used it for that and then you could also use it for or in language arts. If you're doing nouns, you could have a different type of noun in every section of the beach ball give an example of a common noun give an example of a proper noun. Give an example of a possessive noun that type of thing, singular or plural. And same thing with adjectives, adverbs, you could even put all the different parts of speech on a beach ball, and name an adjective name and adverb use an adjective in a sentence, use an adverb in the sentence and put all those different ones on there as just kind of a continual review of different grammar things.

Great ideas. Yeah, how did you store them,

I actually had a net that I hung from different parts of the ceiling. So I would take paper clips and put the clips up into the, the little structures on top of the ceiling, the support of the tiles, and then I would have the net draped in the corner of the room and the beach balls went up in the corner of the room. So that was always fun to throw them back up at the end, and try to get them to stay in the net. Or I would have to climb up after the kids left and put them back in the net. So we had them up there.

So you kept yours inflated all the time?

I did.

I had like, a pump you would use for balloons. More like the type of use for animal balloons. If you're gonna make balloon animals. Yeah. And I would just inflate and deflate mine whenever I wanted to use them. Or if I knew I was going to use it for a week, I would just like stored in a corner somewhere for that week. But yeah, I didn't have a fancy net. That was a smart idea.

My were smaller ones too. So they were smaller beach balls, so more of them could fit in the net, they weren't really big.

Oh, my were pretty huge. They were like, the two foot three foot around one.

Oh, wow. Mine were not that big.

So besides beach balls, you said you also liked using wheels?

Yeah, so I had these cardboard wheels that I actually purchased. At some point in time, they were about, I'd say 18 inches in diameter, but you can cut a wheel out of you know, basically a circle out of cardboard any size that you want. And then I would split the wheel into different sections, depending on how many sections I wanted, what things I wanted to review, the bigger the wheel is, the more space you have to write your questions or your math facts. If you want to do math facts, you can do the same thing that you do with the beach balls. But the bigger the wheel, you know, the more room you have for each section, and the easier it is for the student to grab the wheel. So we would make the sections put a hole in the middle of the wheel and put a shoe string or some type of string through that hole with a knot on the bottom so that the string didn't go through the wheel. And then it would hold the string, spin the wheel. And students would grab the wheel trying to grab a section with their thumb on top so that the thumb would land in a particular section. And so again, you could do a name a common noun name, or proper noun, name a singular noun and put all those types of review questions, the same thing that you put on the beach ball, you can put on the wheel wheels are a little bit easier to store. Yeah, because they're completely flat, and you can just throw them in your closet, whatever, you can decorate them and make them pretty. There is the example of the wheel for the word wheel challenge game. So there's a picture of that in my blog post, you can see a wheel if you were curious to look at it. But yeah, we use the basically the same way parts of speech, math facts, math problems, anything that you want to review could go on the wheel, and then you just spin it and play that game needs a little bit of fun to your review session keeps students a little bit more engaged, because if you're gonna go around, spin the wheel, every student maybe gets a turn, then everybody's a little bit more engaged there.

I was thinking I didn't use wheels at all, but I actually used wheels in social studies somewhat similar, we would all make our own wheel that fit on a sheet of blank paper, and then it would have a cover, and then a little piece of the cover would be cut out. Yeah. And then you'd have a little Brad that went through the center, or a paper clip, just to hold the two pieces together. And then you'd spin it and you'd get like an Egyptian goddess, and then you'd have to name that Egyptian goddess and why they were important and okay, and that sort of thing. Or you'd get a president and, you know, you'd have to name you know, that's Abraham Lincoln. He was this president and he came from this state and he you know, and so we did use wheels, just in a slightly different way.

Right. Can you think of any other ways we could use beach balls or wheels in the classroom besides just for reviewing?

Well, I think we could use them for icebreakers at the beginning of the school year or put get to know you type questions on the beach ball or on the circle and ask kids you know What's your favorite type of pizza? What school did you go to before here? Especially, like, if you're at a middle school, you know, and everybody's coming in from different schools or whatever, if you're doing like it over just after maybe Christmas break, or something you could do what you do during break, how many presidents did you get, you know, just have some fun with it kind of thing. But just as a little get to know you kind of activity as you're switching classes and, and getting to know your new students,

that's a great idea,

do you have a different idea?

You could use them for brain breaks too, just to get students up and moving. Like, you could have them toss the ball around while they go through their multiplication facts, you know, every time the ball you get the ball, you have to see the next fact and maybe that particular times table or something. So you could do something like that, or do some vocabulary review or have them, you know, maybe say a vocabulary word, throw the ball to somebody, and some that person has to define it or something like that. But just as a quick little brain break, just to keep them focused, especially if you have longer class periods, I didn't have block scheduling, or longer class periods, or class periods, only 44 minutes. But if you've got an hour or an hour and a half, or something nice little brain break might be helpful.

Right. That's a great idea. And knowing how much practice we need, with multiplication facts and factors and things like that, that would be a great way to make it a little bit more engaging.

Yes, I think anything like that, that gets them up and moving would help. You could also even use it in a foreign language. Have them like, you know, learn their numbers, as they're counting numbers and you know, or learn their prepositions in their, you know, in Spanish or in Japanese or whatever.

That's a great idea.

So in conclusion, beach balls or wheels can be an excellent tool for the middle school classroom. They provide a fun way to break the ice review material, get students actively involved in the review. And so the next time you're looking for a new way to engage your students, consider incorporating a beach ball or a wheel into your lesson. Make sure you check out Ellie's blog post on beach balls. We'll link it in the show notes. And

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