Busy Bags with Magnets

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I love, love, love busy bags!  No word of exaggeration they have been an absolute life saver on many an occasions.  We regularly take them to restaurants, Doctor's appointments etc and they are perfect for keeping little (and not so little) people busy in quiet time.

If you're not familiar with busy bags the idea is to have a self contained kids activity in a bag that you can grab and go with no replenishing needed.  Perfect for busy parents.  

So, I'm delighted to be taking part in the Busy Bag of the month series.  Each month myself and several other bloggers will be bringing you our latest busy bag ideas.  This month we've been playing with busy bags with magnets.

1 - Pipe Cleaner Discovery Bottle

Super simple this is a magnet (mine's a magnetic stick), chopped up pipe cleaners, a plastic bottle and paper clips.

Hand these items over to the kids and they can play with them how they like.  We found it particularly fun to put the paperclips in the bottle then try to pick them up using the magnet on the outside.  You can read more about this and other pipe cleaner busy bags here.

2 - Magnetic Colour Matching Paper Clips

Don't worry they don't all involve paper clips!  The idea for this came from Teach Beside Me (along with 11 other great busy bag ideas).  

I bought some cheap magnetic sheets (Magnetic photo paper from Poundland if you're a Brit) and glued it on to some coloured popsicle sticks.  I added coloured paper clips and got him to colour match them.

3 - Magnetic Funny Faces

I'd had this idea from Play Create Explore pinned for a while and wasn't disappointed with the results.  I took one of the magnetic sheets and drew on the non magnetic side which was paper covered and drew on lots of eyes, noses and mouths that could be mixed and matched to make funny faces.

When I gave these to the boys they made a few funny faces and then decided to try and fit as many pieces on the tin that I'd given them to use with the magnetic pieces.  It makes me think they'd also love lots of shapes to create patterns with as well.

4 - Magnetic Pom Pom Pictures

Inspired by a round up of Busy Bag ideas from The Rigneys I made these pom pom pictures.  I made a couple of pictures small enough to fit in the tin and coloured them to match the pom poms we have.  I added magnets to the pom poms with hot glue.

These were fun, but after not a lot of play the magnets started to come off the pom poms.  I think I might make some magnetic discs with the magnetic sheets instead as they might be a bit more durable.

5 - Magnetic Shape Sticks

This is one we did a while ago that you can check out here with other craft stick busy bags.  With the magnetic ends on the sticks, you can make all sorts of pictures and patterns.

6 - Magnetic Letters Spelling

We have a whole box of magnetic letters, but the boys don't choose to play with them that often, so inspired by this huge busy bag round up from Small Potatoes I laminated some pictures of simple sight words (cat, hat, bat, car & jar) and also added the appropriate letters (c, a, t, h, b, r & j).

This one went down really well with Bud who's learning to read.  I definitely intend to go back to this one with him and let him do it quietly without his brothers.

The pictures got used together as well which makes me think another great busy bag would be to add lots of simple pictures to the tin so the boys can create little imaginary play scenes.

I hope you've enjoyed these busy bags, you can check out my other busy bag posts here.  Or you can check out our Busy Bag Pinterest Board, if you'd like to see your busy bags there why not add a link in the comments.  And...

...still wanting more Busy Bag ideas then I recommend you check out No Twiddle Twaddle's DIY Sticky Blocks, a great new idea perfect for quiet time.