Cool School Tool - the tennis ball

Last month the Boston Globe printed an article on two "do-it-yourself" magazines, Make and Ready Made. These magazines are for people who look at everyday items and think, "How else can I use these objects?" They encourage reinvention and reuse - finding the strange but perfect beauty in everyday things. OTs as a group have embraced this concept in order to adapt items to meet their clients' needs. The next several posts will focus on common place objects that can be used a school tools.

The first featured item is the tennis ball. By now you have seen several classrooms with them on the bottoms of chair legs (not our original idea, but certainly admired by us). They allow the chairs to be pushed in with minimal effort and without a sound...a quiet classroom!

Another use is the hand puppet. Cut a slit for a mouth, draw a face and squeeze to open. Have the student store pennies or other manipulatives in them. At home, stick your child's lunch money in and give them a chance to build their hand strength daily.














Find someone who belongs to a tennis club and give them an empty bag to fill up. Tennis balls lose their bounce and they get thrown away.