Button Sorting Busy Activity

My three year old daughter absolutely loves this activity! It was so easy to put together and occupies her for a while (aren't those the best type of busy ideas??) I had a bunch of leftover buttons from my hairbow making days and the tray is from her Melissa and Doug bead set. She can sort the buttons by color, size and shape. The tray is really fun to use since it has a lot of sections that are different sizes and keeps the buttons (mostly) contained.

Fun Busy Activities

My husband was relocated a few months ago and is currently living 8 hours away from us, so we travel to see him about every couple of weeks. Since we spend a lot of time in the car (the trip is 8 hours for my husband to drive, but I have not been able to drive it in less than 9 1/2 hours with the kids- most trips are well over 10 hours). My children are 18 months, 3 1/2 and 5 so they cannot occupy themselves! I hate having them watch hours of movies on the trip so every time we travel I try to put together new busy activities for them (when we are finally moved down with him and do not have to make such frequent trips the activities will be homeschooling busy bags!) Here are our activity bags from our last trip:

All the bags neatly in a large storage bag (they did not look like this after we arrived!)

Two large superheroes from a garage sale

Barrette and hair band matching from My Montessori Journey

Markers, crayons, construction paper and foam stickers

Laminated paper dolls (they have velcro on the back of the clothes and on the front of the dolls), they also have magnets on the back of the dolls to stick to metal cookie sheets.

My little gnome dolls (you can see my post here)
Clip art pictures printed and lamintated with magnets on the back

Homemade lacing cards (you can find the printables here and here)

Pasta lacing on pipe cleaners

Easy reader books for my son

My children really enjoyed these acitivities, but I will admit whenever I bring them a bunch of activities in the car all they want to do is watch television but whenever I only bring a few they want more- I can never win!!

Busy Bag Swap

As if I did not have enough to do, I signed up for Unsolicited Advice's K-2nd grade busy bag swap. I am so excited and cannot wait to recieve my box (I only got the email yesterday so I know the box is about a month away!) That being said I am already finished with my assigned activity! I was assigned pinchers and small things. I purchased plastic tongs from The Dollar Store (they come four to a package and were located in the seasonal section in my store), pom poms from The Dollar Store and plastic containers (they come four to a package) from The Dollar Store. I also included some miscellaneous buttons so the children could have a variety of sizes and shapes to use and not just pom poms.

The goal for each bag is to keep it to $1/bag or less (which I did) and that everything fit in a resealable bag. I will send it off to the coordinator of my group and then will receive back 30 different activities for my son. This ends up costing about $60 (since it is about $30 for the 30 activities, $15 to ship the box to the coordinator and I will send $15 to the coordinator to mail my box back).

My husband was not too keen on the cost, but it is well worth it to me because I know to duplicate all 30 activities would be more than $30 , plus my time to put it all together is well worth more than $30. If you are interested she has done other swaps in the past: a toddler swap, Pre-K swap, and a K-2nd swap. She is also planning on a K-2nd reading and math activities swap in the future. Even if you are not interested in the swap she has great busy bag activity ideas that are great for keeping your child busy when homeschooling, traveling or whenever they are bored!

Gnome Project

Since we still have not sold our home we are still taking the long road trip to visit my husband every few weeks. The first trip I had tons of activities for the car and we had our travel DVD player. The kids barely played with the activities and instead wanted to watch movies. The second trip I brought all our kids DVDs and only a few activities. Of course they asked for their activities and I was not as prepared. So this next trip I have decided to be prepared this time (which means they probably will only play with them for a few minutes. Here is one of our new activities: color gnomes. Right now I have only made eight, but once I am less busy (will that ever happen) I plan on making more. They are super easy and I got my inspiration from Little Red Whimsy and adorable etsy shop, and hers are definately cuter with hair and faces. They are made of unfinished wooden people from Hobby Lobby (the regular price is 2.99 for a bag of 8 people), hot glue and felt.

All I did was cut two small pieces of felt and attach them for clothing and a hat with the hot glue gun.

I was planning on keeping these a suprise but my two sons saw them before they were finished (the one who is 18 months won't remember but I guarantee the 5 year old will ask for them as soon as they are in the car.)