busy bag swap

A couple of weeks ago I participated in a busy bag swap. If you haven't heard of busy bags, this post will give you a good idea of what they are. We had a group of twenty mothers of 2-3 year-olds, and we all made small activities that would fit in a gallon-sized ziploc bag. Each mom made twenty versions of one activity and then we had a girls' night to exchange them, so we all came home with twenty different activities for our kids to do. I think it was very successful! I had to laugh though, because every mom said she had just chosen the easiest activity to put together, and every mom thought everyone else's busy bags were so incredible! So what it comes down to is, we're all pretty awesome!

I made lacing card shapes with craft foam. Each bag had a rectangle, circle, and triangle with holes punched around the edges, and three laces (I found a 72-lace pack from the Oriental Trading Company). It was kind of nice to be able to sit and watch movies while putting the busy bags together, but my hands did get sore from punching all those holes!

Kevin has enjoyed having some fun new things to play with. He figured out pretty quickly that the new box on my shelf has fun games in it. I try to introduce one new busy bag at a time in order to avoid over-stimulation--which is never, ever a good thing with Kevin. I also try not to be too disappointed when he only stays interested in a bag for five minutes--after all, that's about as good as it gets with most toys for him.

Kevin is struggling to learn his colors. It just doesn't stick for him. I don't know if it's just a difficult concept or if he actually can't see some colors--which is a possibility because I think I have a family history of color-blindness. At this point I'm not too concerned because he's only two and a half, but a lot of the busy bag activities have color-identifying components, so hopefully they will help him learn.

I think one of the things I appreciated about participating in the swap is that I realized that there are a lot of different ideas for activities to do with my kids on the internet. There are thousands of busy bag ideas online, and a lot of them can be done with things that are inexpensive or that I already have. So if I want to help Kevin learn colors or numbers or letters or fine-motor skills, I can get on the internet and find lots of different little activities to do with him (many thanks to Pinterest for helping me keep track of it all!). Or I could think of my own. Imagine that.

Here's a list of the busy bags I came home with. Some are linked to explanations of similar activities online.

Matching Color Shades
Fishing pole/fish game--the fish were painted clothespins, and the fishing pole was a wooden stick/dowel with a string tied to it and a magnet at the end of the string
Paper dolls (ours was a bear)--a laminated bear with several changes of clothes, attachable by velcro
sorting colored pasta in cupcake liners
Picture popsicle stick puzzles (a picture of Joseph Smith)
Lacing cards
Memory cards (like the game called Memory--Teresa even customized the bags by including pictures of our own kids!)
Floor sorting with felt shapes--foam rectangles of various colors, and an assortment of objects to sort onto the rectangles by their color
I spy bottles
Button snake
Pom pom stuffing
Playdough and cookie cutters
Worm pick up
Pringle can/pipe cleaners
Button counting and slotting--baby food containers with slots for putting buttons through
Felt marble mazes
Geoboards
Egg colors fun--plastic eggs and cards with pictures of eggs with mixed colors--the object is to match the eggs to the picture
Foam tangrams
Pipe cleaners and beads
Felt faces--a small felt board and various pieces of felt to make into faces