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

Quick Pillow Update (and other news)

I wanted to write a quick post to show you the update I made to our couch yesterday.  Last summer (or spring) I discovered the joys of pillow cover-making.  Once I learned the super simple-no-zipper technique to make a pillow cover I whipped up five of them in record time.  I put a few of them in the kids playroom and a couple on our front porch.  I haven't made much since, though, until yesterday.

Awhile back, my friend gave me an oversized pillow form and it's been sitting around our house for months, waiting for a little love.  Finally, finally, I hauled the kiddos down to Jo Ann fabrics (has anyone else noticed how their selection of fabric has gotten soooo much better over the last few years?) and we chose a fabric for our pillow.

I won't bore you with the details on how to make a cover using this technique -- there are dozens of excellent tutorials online -- but I will tell you that it is very easy.  And quick.  I made this guy in under an hour, during nap time, including measuring and cutting the fabric.

So, here's a before pic:

   

I really like all the pillows that are on the couch still, but I'm a little bored with them.  Ready to add in something new.  I wanted something kind of spring-ish, something with some color, and something that would blend nicely with what's already there.  Nat Nat helped me choose the fabric.  Sort of.  She really wanted a purple one, but mama won out.

Here's what we came up with:

Let's get a little closer:

 I really like the pattern and I love the colors: light blue, light green, and grey.  It really does make a big change -- adding in some much needed color and light.

In other news, we were supposed to be celebrating Nat Nat's birthday today, but my little Daniel came down with a 102 fever yesterday and was diagnosed with a sinus infection.  :(  I feel sad for both of my little guys.  Daniel really is a little sickie, and Natalie was so looking forward to her birthday party.  She's okay with the idea of postponing for a couple weeks, I think, but it still makes me sad.  We'll do a smaller, family only thing on Monday, her actual birthday.  I'll post pictures.

But, here they were yesterday, before Daniel showed any symptoms of getting sick.  I rearranged the furniture in the playroom the other day and moved their art table to the middle of the room.  Now it's much more user-friendly; they can both actually get to it pretty easily.  And what makes me even happier is that they are both now really using it!  Yay -- success!

Do you see the shelf in the background, to the right in the picture?  It's empty now, but my plan is to turn it into a craft-supply shelf, with supplies that are safe for them to get to, only (crayons, paper, stickers -- that sort of thing).  I also want to add some sort of a chore chart because we think that Natalie is getting old enough to do some simple chores around the house now that she's 3.  We bought her a piggy bank for her birthday, and we're also going to start teaching her some simple money concepts.  Long story short, I'm kind of excited about this area and I have some plans mind, so I'll keep you guys posted about how it all goes down.

Thanks for reading!
Sarah