Busy Bag Exchange

Have you hosted or participated in a busy bag exchange before?  I never had, but wanted to try it out!  I am part of a pretty active mom's group, and we do most of our communications on Facebook.  So I posted, asking if anyone was interested in doing a a swap, hoping maybe 8-10 moms would be interested.  To my surprise, 17 moms indicated interest!

To keep it organized, I created a Google doc with all the participants names and what activity they were bringing.  I also wrote a few guidelines.  Some of the ideas for guidelines came from Second Story Window.  Here are the guidelines for our swap:

• Please put your items in a ziplock bag and label the outside with the name of your activity.
• Please include a set of directions in your bag.  Even if it seems really self explanatory, please write a sentence or two description on how it can be used.
• Please keep the cost of each bag around $1 or under.
• You do NOT need to laminate any papers included.  If possible, print any papers on cardstock so they will last.
• Put together the quality kind of bag you would want to receive in return. This is really important to remember! Of course we want to be cheap but we also want the activity to hold up to toddler use.
• If you cannot attend our swap night, please give your bags to me or another participant before the swap night.  We will include your bags in the swap and get your new activities to you!

How did it turn out?  It was a huge success!  All the moms were excited to participate.  16 moms sat around my living room on a Saturday morning, enjoying some time catching up and exchanging a variety of activities!

I was so pleased with the variety of activities and the quality of the bags!  Here are the bags that were swapped!

Animal counter sorting using tweezers

Button lacing and number practice from See Vanessa Craft

Clothespin color matching from Rookie Mom

Make a felt pizza

Copying shapes and patterns with yarn on felt from Momtastic

Wiffle ball lacing and weaving from See Vanessa Craft

Fish and frog sorting and patterning

Pom pom push

Lacing cards

Velcro craft sticks to make shapes and letters

Button snake from Motherhood on a Dime

Counting with googley eyes

Clothespin number wheel from Money Saving Mom

Shape memory from Delighting in Today

Felt roads

Crazy straw weaving from Powerful Mothering

Make a felt sandwich

Caterpillar counting from Powerful Mothering

If you have been thinking about hosting or participating in a busy bag swap, I highly recommend it!

To see more busy bag ideas, check out my Pinterest board.

Follow Stacy's board Busy bags for a busy boy on Pinterest.

Farm Busy Bag

Another Busy bag I put together was a farm busy bag. This bag required just me pulling some things together. I pulled out four books about farms that we already had and the little barn with stuffed animals that make noise.

We recently used this busy bag for a trip to the vet and it kept Little Guy busy for close to an hour!

Simplicity!  What would you add?

Color Busy Bag

So I am enjoying putting together busy bags!  (Can you tell?) One skill that  I have been working with Little Guy on is recognizing colors, so a color themed bag seemed perfect!

I put together this simple color matching activity, using clothespins and felt.  This idea came from The Pleasantest Thing.

This activity is great fine motor practice, as Little Guy has to thread the beads onto the pipe cleaners.  This idea came from Mrs. Kelly's Kindergarten.  I cut the pipe cleaners in half, making them fit into a spice jar.

The beauty of the spice jar is that it made the pipe cleaners into another activity: pushing the pipe cleaners through the holes in the lid!

I added three books and we were set. The Flaptastic Colors book was a great book to have as each page has a large flap to open to find things that are that color.

So we took this busy bag to the car dealership while we waited for an oil change.  Overall, it kept Little Guy quite busy (in addition to him playing with the stroller).
 

Putting our new bag to the test!  Stringing the beads.

Working hard to use the clothespin!

After the first use I made a couple of changes to the bag.  I added a little tray to dump the beads in. This is the lid of a small gift box. Little Guy really liked to dump out the beads, but if I wasn't ready, they went all over. The tray should help with that. 

I also changed up the books a little. The titles now included are:

• White Rabbit's Color Book
• Brown Bear,  Brown Bear, What Do You See? 
• Colors
• Colors (A Baby Einstein mini board book)
• Colors Nursery Rhyme Concept Book

So that is our color busy bag.

What activities do you have to practice colors?

Transportation busy bag

What little boy doesn't love cars? Our next busy bag uses transportation as its theme.

I like activities that pull double (or triple) duty. This matching activity works on 3 skills: color matching, number recognition/ counting, and fine motor. On each clothespin are the colors of the cars to match. Each race car  has a numeral on it (1-6) which corresponds to the number of boxes on the clothespin. Finally, squeezing the clothespin and putting in the car is a great skill!

Of course, there are books included ( Little Guy loves to look at books!).  Two of these books are touchy feely books, which Little guy still enjoys. 

What transportation busy bag would be complete without some trucks? This one has a little bulldozer and fire truck.  The last activity included is a threading activity where you thread the cars onto the shoe lace (thanks Grandma A.). 

What would you add to a transportation themed busy bag?

Very Hungry Caterpillar Busy Bag

I love the idea of busy bags.  Since I will be a stay at home mom, there will be times that Little Guy will have to come with me to appointments or other places where there may not be toys for him, so I want to have activities ready to go.  In fact, I am so intrigued by the idea of busy bags that I have a Pinterest board dedicated to them!

I love the story The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle (whom Little Guy shares a birthday with!).  The first thing I did for this bag was to make the story out of felt. (I had a lot of felt leftover from making the Quiet Book, so I only had to buy one piece of purple!)  I got this idea from Familylicious via Pinterest (of course). I cut and hot glued all the different types of food together.  To get Little Guy involved, I had him help me create the butterfly.  I pre-cut the pieces, and had him lay them on the butterfly's wings.

Getting ready!

Hard at work!

Here is our beautiful butterfly!

The complete set of felt items for our busy bag.

The next idea I also got through Pinterest.  This idea is from Here Come the Girls.  I used a craft foam sheet and cut a leaf shape. Then I used a hole punch to put holes around the edge. The caterpillar is made from a red shoelace, a piece of a red pipe cleaner, a piece of a green pipe cleaner, and of course some googly eyes. I hot glued it all together to help make it secure.

Isn't that a cute caterpillar?

The last activity included is bead threading.  I picked up a bag of large wooden beads at the thrift store recently. I painted one red for the head and nine green for his body. I used a green pipe cleaner and glued it into the red bead, which also helped to create a nose. I added ears and eyes (of the googly variety). Little Guy can thread the beads onto the pipe cleaner to make the caterpillar.  This activity fits nicely into a large spice jar.

String a caterpillar.

All done!

All the parts of this busy bag!

So here is the completed bag. It has the felt story, the leaves for lacing, the caterpillar to thread, a book, and a small stuffed caterpillar. I can't wait to try it out!

What ideas do you have for busy bags?