Baggie Books

So, this is not an original idea.  I saw this online a couple weeks ago, and I cannot remember where I found it.  It was a way cool blog, though, and if it was yours (or if you've got something similar to this project) let me know and I will definitely link back to you!

With that being said, yes, I found this idea and immediately fell in love.  It couldn't be simpler: take a few sandwich bags, some masking tape, and some fabric, and -- voila -- you've got an educational material with endless possibilities.  I read about this and then made one for our family in about 30 minutes.

The materials: masking tape and five sandwich bags.  You'll also need a pair of scissors, and down the line, some scrap fabric and a sewing machine.  You could also hand sew this project, but with a machine I was done with the sewing in under five minutes.  

First, cut a piece of masking tape, fold it in half lengthwise, and place it on the closed end of one of the sandwich bags.

Then carefully place another bag on top of the first one, adhering it to the tape.

Repeat these steps, adding on as many bags as you would like in your book.  I made a book with five bags. After this step, I also cut off all of the excess tape on the top and bottom ends of the book.

Time to take things to the sewing room (aka, my bedroom).  Step one, cut a length of scrap fabric long enough to "bind" your book and quickly hem the sides.

Step two, sew your fabric right onto the plastic bags and through the masking tape.  I wasn't sure how this step was going to go, but it was pretty quick and easy.

Here's a close-up of the binding.  I just left the ends raw, since I figured that this book wouldn't last terribly long.  We might use this several times and then one of the bags might tear and I'll have to make another, so I didn't want to put too much time into this.

Okay, so how does it work?

My first idea was to do a color finding activity since Daniel is learning to identify colors right now.  I tore off scraps of construction paper and put one color in each bag.  I ended up with blue, white, black, red, and orange (in no particular order).

Then I had the kids look around the playroom and their bedrooms for toys or other small objects that were the same color as the scraps of paper already in the book.

Daniel liked this activity for about two minutes.  But Natalie loved this and was all over it.  She was the one to find most of the toys.  I guess because she's older?  Almost two-year-olds probably don't have very long attention spans.

Anyway, here's what we came up with.  The book got very bulky after it was all filled up:

Blue and white:

And red and orange:

I didn't take a picture of the black bag, but Natalie put a toy truck in there -- because of the tires.

I'd say this was a successful project.  It didn't take long to complete, and Natalie totally enjoyed carrying it around and putting things in each bag.  I want to try it again with Daniel, maybe at a different time of day, and see if I can get him more interested, perhaps looking at shapes as well as colors.  And with Natalie, I might try this activity with letters or numbers.

What ideas have you guys come up with to teach readiness skills to your kiddos?

Thanks for reading!
Sarah

Busy Bags

Do any of you use Busy Bags with your kids?  Last October I hosted a Busy Bag swap after reading so much about them on the internet.  Basically, I asked a bunch of friends if they'd be interested in participating and about 15 of them were.  So we each made 15 of the same activity and put each one in a gallon-sized baggie.  At the swap, we (you guessed it) traded them out.  It felt a lot like Valentine's Day -- everyone had a grocery bag and we just set them up and went around the room, giving one of our homemade Busy Bags to each person.  At the end, we each had 15 different games or activities to take home with us.  It was a lot of fun!

Anyway, I have to confess, I've been keeping the Busy Bags in my bedroom, out of the way, so that the kids don't make a giant mess with them.  But recently I realized that I only take them out every once in awhile and that kind of defeats the purpose of having them.  Also, this week I reorganized our playroom, so I decided it was time for the Busy Bags to make an official appearance.  Out they came.

I cleaned the box that they were in and slapped on a label.  Then I made a little spot for them on the bookshelf in our playroom:

  
The verdict?  Success!  They both love them, but I think Natalie especially likes having access to them (a lot of the activities are a little too old for Daniel, I think).  They'll just pull the box out a little bit, dig through the bags, find one that they like, and take the activity to the table to work on it.  It's kind of fun.  Makes me feel like I teach preschool again.

Today, I snapped a few pictures of Natalie working on a counting activity:

The activity was very simple, and took her all of five minutes to finish it.  There are five cups, each with a numeral (1-5) written on it, along with the corresponding number of dots.  Also in the bag were a couple of handfuls of dry pasta (some were dyed with food coloring).  Natalie's job was to count out enough pasta pieces to put the correct amount in each cup.

The activity works well because it's so simple that she can almost do it by herself and it doesn't take long to complete.  If it was more complex, she definitely would have lost focus before finishing.  As you can see, she was pretty into it.

The activity also had a little makeshift fishing rod.  I wasn't terribly sure what to do with that... maybe the kid is supposed to grab a piece of pasta with that instead of using their hands?  That seemed way too hard for me, so I tossed it aside and just let Nat Nat use her hands.

Yay for Nat Nat!  She did it :)

The Busy Bags seem to be so popular around here that I'm thinking about adding in some more.  Most of the ones that we have right now focus on math and readiness skills (colors, shapes, etc.).  I don't think any of them teach letter recognition.  Natalie knows all of her letters, but she's still learning to recognize the lower case alphabet, and Daniel still needs to learn most of his.  So I'm going to work on some sort of activity that would let them work on letters... I'll post when I come up with something.

Thanks for reading!
Sarah