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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This is a great busy bag for building fine motor skills. It would be good to pack on a vacation and add treasures from your travels to sort.