Busy bags 5

The last busy bags to share with you today firstly, making your own jigsaws. For these jigsaws I used lollipop sticks for one and have labelled them with numbers so that Little Boo knows how to put it together. For the other jigsaw I cut up a photograph then used another piece of card to draw around the pieces so Little Boo needs to match the shapes to put the jigsaw together. I am lucky that I take lots of pictures when we go to the zoo so had loads of spare photographs of animals so used these.

Because Little Boo loves drawing and writing I thought it would be a good idea to include a bag with a small note pad and selection of crayons and pens. This has worked and we often play guess Mommys picture.

Busy bags 4

Little Boo loves Charlie and Lola so I was really pleased when I found this dress up game on Cbeebies website. I coloured In the images but older children would probably enjoy doing this themselves. I then laminated it ready for use. This game was never intended for use as a travel game but rethinking the idea and having used it (in the car) I think I needed to add some magnets onto the pieces if we intend to use it as a travel game again. It was good fun but the pieces were slipping everywhere in the car which got frustrating.

There are some other busy bag items which I brought all rather cheap. The first a small magnetic sketch board. A Mr potato head where you attach his facial features. This was a good game to learn where parts of the face go using a lot of position words to explain as Little Boo was playing. The last brought item is shoe lacing.

As mentioned earlier on the blog I wanted to make Little Boo some more threading cards with all the letters of her name. I have done this as a busy bag idea and it has worked well. I am hoping this will help with learning the letters of her name.      

                                                                         

Busy bags part 3

The next three busy bags that I am sharing with you are threading inspired. I am sure some of you may have seen our post on the Sellotape reel threading. For this I created a threading game for Little Boo out of Sellotape reels. These are great to transport as all is needed is the reels and threading material. Little Boo loves threading so this always keeps her happy and busy.

Another threading bag just contains coloured beads and some pipe cleaners that are the same colours as the beads. The idea is that the beads can be matched to the same colour pipe cleaner. However, Little Boo also enjoyed just twisting the pipe cleaners around each other as well or just making mommy pretty bracelets.

Button practise is the next busy bag this was inspired from tried and trues post on busy bag swaps.  It is simple to make and cheap as I already had loads of felt. The idea is to improve skills with using a button. Little Boo can use the button to put the felt shapes onto the ribbon. This was easy to make and can be used for pattern making and/or colour recognition. Little Boo enjoyed this as I started to make it more and more challenging with the patterns. The only problem was that the felt holes will stretch so be careful when little one is using this especially if they get frustrated if they can not button one on.

Hope that you liked these ideas there are a few more tomorrow :) 

Busy bags part 2

Today I have three more of our busy bag ideas to share with you. First of all I decided to place all our busy bags in clear pencil cases which were purchased at 99p each.  These have been plenty big enough and enable Little Boo and me to see what is in each bag. I could of brought the binder pencil cases and was considering this until I saw that they were quite expensive.

First of all is the sandpaper and wool bag. The idea came from Modern parents messy kids blog . This is a great bag as the ideas are so versatile children can either make letters numbers or simple patterns. This bag is so easy to transport as well. The sandpaper I brought from the pound  shop so it was not very expensive at all.  The wool was brought from a  local shop and was £2.00 for each massive ball.  I had these in though as I have used wool before.

The next bag was so easy to get ready and probably the most popular with Little Boo. I have recently brought some little animals for her initial sounds tubs so have placed some of these into a bag with green, blue and brown felt or card. This means we can play a game of where does the animal live grass, water or mud.

The last bag I am sharing with you today is the lollipop sticks and velcro. This idea was again inspired from the web and Tots Treasures. Little Boo was able to make shapes and patterns with these or stack them. The only problem is that I did not find these very appropriate for in the car as they ended up everywhere as she pulled them out the bag or apart. I decided to hot glue gun all the Velcro onto our Lollipop sticks simply for the fact that when I made these before Little Boo very easily picked the Velcro off them.

Getting busy with busy bags

Apologies for technical problems I have now sorted the photographs issue.  I now have realised that I have to resize all my images before uploading them to my picassa web albums so have had the wonderful task of opening each photo on my blog and resizing it.  All worth it though as I have found out a new way of editing the photographs hopefully making them more appealing for everyone.

On the same line as technology I thought that I would also share with you that I can now manage my Facebook page via my mobile phone.  This means that when I return to work and University even if I am unable to do a blog post I will be sharing a photograph with you via facebook.  This may be a book that we have read and enjoyed, a toy from the toy library or an image of what we have been doing.  I hope that this will enable me a way to stay in contact with my readers even when life gets busier again so be sure to "like" the page. I know a lot already have so thank you for that.

Over this next few days I am going to share with you some busy bag ideas.  I have always wanted to make up some busy bags and have started to collate ideas on Pinterest to inspire me. I decided to make these a few days ago and all of them were really simple to make apart from a small incident with my hot glue gun, I forgot how much it hurts to burn yourself! please be careful.

The first one I have shared with you is the magnetic busy tin. In this box are Pom poms that have magnetic sheet placed on the back to make them Magnetic. With thanks to Planet of the Apels  for this idea initially and The Journals of Laura Ingalls Wannabe.  (I could of used magnets but I knew I had this in and did not want to fork out a lot of money buying magnets). I have in this box confessions of a homeschoolers print out  the Pom poms can be placed in the boxes as a counting activity. If you have not been to this blog I suggest that you try it out there are some FANTASTIC resources on there the woman is amazing!. The magnetic numbers in the tin can also be matched to the numbers on the cards.

In this box are the funny faces magnetic travel tin that I shared a few months ago.  Little Boo loves this activity and I thought it would be fun to add this to the tin as well. This way Little Boo gets a choice of which activity she would prefer to do.

I have placed a die inside this tin as well.  Little Boo loves shaking this and playing with it so I thought this would be a fun way to encourage her to count out the dots and then match the number of dots to the number of pom poms that she counts out. There is also the opportunity to encourage children to make patterns with the Pom Poms over at Bubbles and bobbins blog there are some wonderful PDF print outs we are also going to give these a try. I may even make some of our own watch this space...

PRICE BREAKDOWN

I am trying to make the bags for as little money as possible as I know many of us like to save money. So thought I would provide a break down of the prices.

Tin- Free (my husband was given some lovely cakes at work that cam in this tin, needless to say I ate most of the cakes)
pom poms- £1 for 200 from pound shop
magnetic sheet- £1 for 2 sheets
magnetic numbers- £2
die- FREE taken out of a  game that was being thrown out


Please feel free to share this idea google+ it Facebook it, Twitter about it or now I have added the option to Pin it. I am addicted to Pinterest!!!