I love busy bags (if you've not heard of them they're as described - a bag of goodies to keep your little ones busy). They always provide a bit of distraction and something new when tempers fray or I'm in an environment where the kids need to keep occupied like in a restaurant. Plus, I love that I can just pick them up and go. There are heaps of ideas for busy bags online, like on my busy bag pinboard as well as on these sites which were inspiration for these clothes peg busy bags - Homeschooling in the rose garden, Planet of the Apels and Second Story Window.
For this I used my star puncher on paint chips to make these, putting one star on a peg and one on the paper which I then laminated.
Here it is in action with Champ colour matching the pegs to the paper stars. It took a bit of practise for him to be able to squeeze the pegs, but he's got it now. Yes, he is sat in his little brother's highchair - don't ask!
And, here it is in its little bag. All packed and ready to go.
I was then chatting to my sisters about busy bags and they've both since made some. Auntie B made these two, the number wheel above and the colour pegs below. The colour matching was particularly easy she just used a bit of cereal packet for the card and then coloured in the pegs. Her tip if you want to copy this one is to leave a bigger space after the word so that when you clip the peg on it doesn't cover up the writing.
Here's Bud using the number wheel, he found this one a bit more challenging than the colours.
Another great idea is to do a mini clothes line with pegs in a busy bag - one for the future for us!
These are really great. My toddler would love these, except he finds clothespins a challenge to open (we discovered this when we tried a color matching activity I found on carrots are orange). Tips??
ReplyDeleteHi Jenni, it took Champ a little while to do this too so for a while this busy bag kept me busy too as I had to help him. Now after a few goes he can do it on his own, so practice is probably the first suggestion. But, Champ is nearly two and a half and they al do things differently, so you could leave it a bit and come back to it in a month. Champ loves to play with tongs and I think that may have helped him as well so you could try using tongs to pick up balls of screwed up paper first and see how he goes. Hope you get to have a go, I'm sure it's just a matter of practice and time and if you want to try out the matching without the pegs Rebecca's comment is a good one or we've also done matching building bricks or duplo to coloured pieces of paper. Thanks for stopping by, Hannah
DeleteHi Jenni, You could try colouring some paper, laminating them and use velcro instead of clothespins. Hope that helps.
ReplyDeleteBrilliant idea! Now you've got me thinking about how I could do some Velcro busy bags, hmmmmmm!
DeleteHi Jenni
DeleteThe opening and closing of the clothespin is good for your child's fine motor development, when it is age appropriate. You can sort with tweezers with colored pom poms.
I'd not heard of these but they look a great idea.
ReplyDeleteI love the mess rating! so cute!
ReplyDeleteLove these ideas!! Thank you for sharing at Sharing Saturday!! I hope you are having a wonderful week!
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for linking up to Tuesday Tots this week.
ReplyDeleteI haven't done any busy bags yet but I think that these would be great for quiet time activities for my toddlers.
Loving this idea we have done something simular with the alphabet but this has given me more ideas thankyou. Will be going to get some more pegs :) Looking for busy bag ideas I do not know why I have not thought of using the alphabet pegs that I have! Any more ideas would be appreciated especially with a holiday coming up soon and a few hours of being stuck in the car.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great list of things to do with clothes pins. I want to go make these.
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