Busy Bag Exchange

5
All the Mommas with their Busy Bags!

One of the best parts of being a preschool mom has been meeting the others children’s moms!!  It is so nice to connect with other women in the same or similar life phase. We can share in the laughs, woes, and triumphs motherhood brings.   AND every once in a while, we actually get together for a night of kidless socialization! (I have to say it…I really LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this group of gals-kids or not!)  But have no fear…kids were very much the topic of conversation and were a huge part of the reason we got together!

Brooke  had the great idea of having a busy bag exchange!  Katie was our super generous host with one of the cutest/best decorated homes in America (No lie.)!  We had tons of finger foods including: caprese salad on a stick, baked parmesan dip, brie cheese, and too many sweets to admit to the public.  Oh, can’t forget the yummy drinks…peach Schnapps slushy and homemade Sangria!  With that line up…I’m sure you are already planning your busy bag exchange party for this week!

What is a busy bag exchange?  (Don’t worry I asked the same question.)  It is a party where everyone creates their own “busy bag” and brings enough to swap with the other moms.  A busy bag can be any activity (educational or fun) that the child can do during quiet time or “I’m bored” times.  Our bags included activities around counting, patterns, reading, site words, and following simple directions!  Some other ideas for focus could include cutting, gluing, syllable recognition, etc.

Here is an example of one of the bags.  Brooke laminated a bunch of different colored words and cut them into squares.  She made a “game board” out of felt with the corresponding colors of felt for the words.  The child can match any of the orange words to the orange square, yellow to the yellow square, and so on to build a sentence!  She also threw in some writing paper to practice writing the sentence and a large space for the child to draw a picture of the sentence!

The busy bag can be as simple as a printed sheet with different activities on it or as elaborate as a small science experiment.  Lucky for me there are tons of EASY yet fun busy bag ideas out there!  So, if you like the idea but you are afraid it will require a lot of grunt work….search and find something simple that suits your level of craftiness.  There is no need to be Martha Steward to create a successful busy bag.

Tell me: Do you use busy bags? Have you tried an ‘exchange’ like this one? I’d love to hear your experience. (Leave a comment below!)

 

 

5 COMMENTS

  1. Katie – I am just now seeing this post. I wanted to share that I coordinated a busy bag exchange last year for about 12 women. We ended up doing 15 different busy bags for each Mom – so lots of bags for our kiddos. Some of the items were off the internet, but we also created some originals as well – I was desiring some Bible themed activities. If you are interested in seeing the various bags we did I would love to share with you. It was definitely a lot of work the way I did it, but it was a lot of fun and my little ones have enjoyed them.

  2. My brother suggested I may like this website. He was totally right.
    This submit actually made my day. You cann’t imagine simply how so much time I had spent for this information! Thanks!

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here