What is a busy bag, you ask? Why, it is a little zip-lock bag of creative goodness stowed away in your handbag/ car/ anywhere in fact... that you can pull out and entertain your dear small offspring at a moment's notice!
The bags contain a simple activity - something your young child can create or do that afterward, you can simply zip-lock back again for future emergencies!
You're liking this already aren't you?
The swap I have held my own hand up for involves 12 volunteers -- each of us constructing 12 little busy-bags of our own choice. Each person chose a unique activity so that next week -- on swap night -- we bring our activities along and swap with one another so that we each end up with not one but 12 delightful busy-bags to hide smugly away, knowing that at a moment's notice, we can pull one out and get a half-hour or so of reprieve!
You can imagine just how useful these would be at the doctors surgery... on an airplane (oh gawd I wish I'd had one of these last week for Elliott on the plane to NZ!)... in a restaurant... and in any number of other situations!
A little stumped on what to make for my own busy-bag, I did a web search and unveiled some of the following ideas:
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| from here |
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| from here |
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| Button Snake from here |
If you love this idea and want to host your own local busy-bag swap, I found this link with a bunch of really great activity ideas to get you started. Another good one, complete with a linky-thingamy is this one, with tons of pages of cool and creative activities for kids!
Wondering what I'm going to make for my bag?
Well I'll share with you... I plan to make some mini-chalkboards! I am somewhat chalk obsessed at the mo so it seemed kinda obvious... Not entirely sure how I'm going to do it yet but I will need to sort it out quick-smart, because the swap is on Monday night! I'll post pics of my masterpieces over the weekend once I've made them, if you are interested.
Aside from having a tiny bit of stage fright about rocking up to somebody's house that I don't know and meeting a bunch of girl's that I also don't know to exchange these bags, I am quite excited about it, and isn't it a great way to meet new people!
I'll report on how I fare next week - should I be brave enough to bring my camera along to the swap?
x
