Balls!

Okay, we have tried these, these, and these balls. All from very reputable child care supply places. We have even ordered some of these and these! You would think that with all the balls we have ordered, that our yard would be full of balls! We should have more balls than we know what to do with, right? WRONG! The foam balls are pretty good. At least, they are still able to play with them. They last a long while, until some child who is having anger or sensory issues for the day decides to pick it apart. However, I have yet to find a playground ball that will last longer than two weeks. We treat our balls pretty well, considering the problem we are having. We take them in every night, we make sure they have the right amount of air in them. We don't let the children abuse them by standing on them and such. And still, after about a day at least one of them has a pinpoint hole in it. By the end of the week, we typically only have one or two good ones remaining; and we usually buy 2-3 sets at a time, so you would think that would be 1-2 from each set...you would be wrong!

One set, the outer coverings actually began peeling off after just one day. One ball had a hole in it as I was putting air in it for the first time! After about 2 weeks, we are left with one lonely playground ball. I have tried patches, but it doesn't work.

I could just order all the foam balls, but they definitely don't bounce as well. They also don't act quiet like a playground ball because of their lightweightedness; and yes I've tried the bigger foam balls as well.

So, I throw this question out to all of you: What do you do about balls in your yards? Even when we have parents donate balls from the stores they all go flat pretty quickly. Is this just a highly consumable product? Or has the quality of balls really gone down?