Busy Bags Archives - The Chaos and the Clutter

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3 Busy Bags with Popsicle Sticks

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Math Busy Bag

Sharla Kostelyk — Tue, 23 Jun 2015 10:03:11 +0000

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.

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Colours and Fine Motor Busy Bag

Sharla Kostelyk — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 10:38:21 +0000

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.

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Simple Scooping Busy Bag

Sharla Kostelyk — Tue, 09 Jun 2015 10:31:54 +0000

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.

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Lacing Cards You Can Make Yourself

Sharla Kostelyk — Tue, 26 May 2015 16:03:11 +0000

Buying themed lacing cards can get expensive but it is so easy to make your own. All you need is to buy foam sheets. You can often pick up foam sheets in packs at the dollar store or you can buy individual ones at a craft store.

Materials needed:

foam sheets
plastic lacing string
hole punch
scissors
resealable plastic bag
optional: shaped cookie cutters or stencils

To make your own lacing cards, cut the foam sheets into shapes. You can do this easily by cutting simple shapes like circles, squares and triangles with scissors or you can make more elaborate shapes. To create more elaborate shapes, lay a shaped cookie cutter or stencil on top of the foam sheet, trace with a pen or pencil and cut out.

Next, hole punch around the outside of the shape at regular intervals (you may want the holes closer together or further apart depending on the ability level of the child). Place the hole punched shapes and some plastic lacing string into a resealable bag. This creates a lacing card busy bag that can be taken with you anywhere and is a great quiet activity as well as good fine motor practise.

You can also create several of these busy bags, each one having a theme. You can use farm cookie cutters to make farm lacing cards or use dinosaur stencils to make dino theme lacing cards.

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.

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Simple Sewing Busy Bag

Sharla Kostelyk — Thu, 07 May 2015 18:35:26 +0000

The best kinds of activities are the ones that don’t take a lot of money, planning or supplies because they are the ones that are actually feasible for most moms to do. I spend time on Pinterest finding awesome crafts and activities to do with my kids but I know from experience that the ones that I’m going to have to go out and buy a lot of supplies for or spend an hour doing prep work for aren’t likely to actually happen.

This simple sewing busy bag only needs a few items to assemble.

Materials needed:

yarn
plastic sewing needles
styrofoam plates
large resealable bag

To create this busy bag, put a few foam plates in a resealable bag with two or three plastic sewing needles. Cut some lengths of yarn, some shorter, some longer and add them into the bag as well. Seal the bag and the activity is ready for your child.

Not only is this a nice quiet activity that can be used to keep your child busy in a waiting room, in the car or while older kids are homeschooling, this also teaches early sewing skills.

Depending on the age of your child, you may have to help them get started with this activity by demonstrating how to thread the needle and by putting a knot in the end of it (older children can easily do this by themselves). You can then show them how to sew by poking the threaded needle through the back of the plate and coming down through the front of the plate.

Younger children can “sew” random lines on the plate, creating a bit of a spiderweb look while older children can practise smaller stitches and sewing in a straight line.

Our daughter Dancing Queen began by sewing large overlapping lines on the first plate but as her confidence grew, she tried smaller stitches next to each other to form lines on later plates. She was really proud of her efforts!

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