Activity bags don’t have to be complicated to be effective. This simple beading busy bag proves that again.

Materials needed:

• pipe cleaners
• plastic pony or spacer beads, assorted colours
• resealable bag

Yep, three items including the bag…that’s all that’s needed!

Yet, with just those three items, your child can work on patterning, fine motor skills and colour matching. These are great preschool skills to work on and they’ll never know they are learning while they play!

To assemble this busy bag, throw some pipe cleaners and beads into a resealable bag. If you want to complicate this, you can create patterning cards for your child to match or you can fill some of the pipe cleaners with beads in a pattern for your child to recreate.

At first, our daughter found it too overwhelming to create patterns with many colours included. I had originally included five bead colours in the bag but took out two colours until she mastered patterning with those and then I put those colours back in.

By stringing beads onto pipe cleaners, you can also create bracelets and bookmarks, so this is a very versatile activity.

If you are looking for more busy bag ideas, you may be interested in following my Activity Bags board on Pinterest.

Follow Sharla Kostelyk’s board Activity Bags on Pinterest.

Simple Scooping Busy Bag

Simple Sewing Busy Bag

Counting Busy Bag

As always, my favourite activities are those that are easy and inexpensive to put together. This busy bag is both of those but it also creates open-ended play possibilities.

Materials needed:

• string
• scissors
• large piece of thin cardboard
• large resealable bag

To create this string busy bag, cut a piece of cardboard into a circle (it doesn’t have to be exact). I placed a plate down on the cardboard and traced it and then cut out the shape. Using scissors, cut triangles along the outside of the circle at regular intervals. Again, this does not have to be exact.

You want to use cardboard that isn’t too thick. Often the cardboard that comes in packaging is the right thickness or you can use the side of a cereal box.

Place the cardboard cutout and some pieces of long string or yarn into a large resealable bag. Your busy bag is ready to be used!Using the cardboard cutout, your child can create patterns or shapes with the string. They can also use the cardboard to create a bit of a weaving wheel.

We store all of our busy bags in one place so that I can easily grab a few on our way out the door to use in the vehicle or in a waiting room. It also gives our daughter a place that she knows she can go to get a quiet activity to do when she is bored or when I am working with her older siblings.

If you are looking for more busy bag ideas, you may be interested in following my Activity Bags board on Pinterest.

Follow Sharla Kostelyk’s board Activity Bags on Pinterest.

3 Busy Bags with Popsicle Sticks

5 Busy Bags with Pipe Cleaners

7 Busy Bags for Learning Colours

7 Busy Bags with Paint Chips

Looking for an activity to help reinforce math concepts? This is a simple busy bag that transports easily and is fun to do.

Materials needed:

• card stock paper
• scissors or paper cutter
• permanent pen or marker
• single hole punch
• sandwich size resealable bag

This busy bag is easily one of our kids’  favourites. They love getting to use a hole punch!

To create this busy bag, cut paper into rectangles. I like to use coloured card stock as the thickness makes it easier to work with and the colour makes it more fun!

Next, write one number on each piece of paper, far over to one side, leaving a lot of room for your child to be able to hole punch the correct amount of holes. For younger children, you can use only single digits, but for older children, you can use whichever numbers they are currently learning. You can even adapt this busy bag for elementary ages by writing fractions or by using the cards to reinforce teaching about place value.

Once you have written on the papers, place them in a sandwich size bag along with a single hole punch and seal.

When using this activity, kids simply hole punch each cards with the amount of holes written. This allows them to practise counting (or other math skills depending on what you’ve written on the card) and also allows them to work on fine motor skills as they are squeezing the hole punch and lining things up.

Because of its size, this math busy bag is very portable. It can be thrown into your purse for use in a waiting room or kept in a vehicle to use on road trips.

If you are looking for more busy bag ideas, you may be interested in following my Activity Bags board on Pinterest.

Follow Sharla Kostelyk’s board Activity Bags on Pinterest.
3 Busy Bags with Popsicle Sticks

5 Busy Bags with Pipe Cleaners

7 Busy Bags for Learning Colours

7 Busy Bags with Paint Chips

This busy bag can be put together with items that you likely already have in the house or that can be purchased inexpensively from a dollar store. Materials needed:

• plastic jumbo tweezers
• ice cube tray
• anything you have that is colourful and can be pinched and transferred like buttons, pompoms, hair elastics, sequins, erasers, or anything else you can think about
• large resealable bag

To create this busy bag, place an ice cube tray, the jumbo tweezers and the colourful items you choose into a resealable bag.

It can now be stored and is ready to be used. When playing with this busy bag during quiet time or independent play, your child can use the tweezers to transfer the items into the individual compartments and sort them by colour, items or even by shape. This offers excellent fine motor practise as well as offering the opportunity to further skills in sorting and patterning.

It’s always interesting to see how my kids use the busy bags in ways I didn’t plan or expect them to. Granola Girl made a game of seeing how many hair elastics she could pick up in the tweezers at one time. She also liked sorting the pompoms according to their size in addition to sorting based on colour. She didn’t mind mixing together the pompoms and hair elastics when sorting by colour but one of my other daughters can’t stand for the different items to mix in the same compartments! It’s neat to see parts of their personalities show in the course of their play and discovery time.

If you are looking for more busy bag ideas, you may be interested in following my Activity Bags board on Pinterest.

Follow Sharla Kostelyk’s board Activity Bags on Pinterest.

3 Busy Bags with Popsicle Sticks

5 Busy Bags with Pipe Cleaners

7 Busy Bags for Learning Colours

7 Busy Bags with Paint Chips

Busy bags don’t have to be complicated to teach and entertain. This is a great example of a busy bag that is simple to put together but can allow a child to work on a variety of skills.

Materials needed:

• two or more plastic bowls
• plastic spoon
• mini plastic container with lid
• beads or buttons
• large resealable bag

Fill the small plastic container with colourful beads or buttons. Place the lid on the container. Put the container, at least two plastic bowls and a spoon into a resealable bag and your busy bag is ready to go.

This busy bag is great for fine motor practise as your child scoops the beads or buttons from the container into the bowls. Once they have transferred all of them, they can either pour them back into the small container or scoop them back in.

This exercise can be especially helpful for children with special needs or toddlers who are needing extra practise with feeding skills.
The items in this busy bag can also be used to practise sorting. You could include both buttons and beads and have your child sort them between the bowls or have them sort the different colours.

We store all of our busy bags lined upright in a box so that when I’m needing time to work with the older kids, our youngest can take one out and go work on it by herself. Keeping them all together also allows for me to quickly grab a few if we are going to be heading somewhere that we will be sitting in a waiting room or spending a long time in a vehicle.

If you are looking for more busy bag ideas, you may be interested in following my Activity Bags board on Pinterest.

Follow Sharla Kostelyk’s board Activity Bags on Pinterest.

3 Busy Bags with Popsicle Sticks

5 Busy Bags with Pipe Cleaners

7 Busy Bags for Learning Colours

7 Busy Bags with Paint Chips