Toddler Busy Bag Exchange

Two year olds are difficult to entertain.  Am I right?  At least my little guy is.  So when my moms group announced we were having a Toddler Busy Bag Exchange, I was all over it!

What is a Busy Bag?  It's just what it sounds like. A bag full of things to keep toddlers busy.  In this case, 21 different games or things they can do over and over again.

Here's how our exchange worked.  We had 18 moms participate, with a total of 21 kids.  For each kid you wanted a bag for, you had to choose one "activity" to make.  So, if you just have one kid, you made one activity.   If you have two kids, you made two.  You could make anything you wanted, and there are tons of websites out there with ideas.  Here are a few:

http://www.mydeliciousambiguity.com/2010/06/toddler-busy-bag-resource.html
http://therigneys.wordpress.com/2011/08/26/toddler-busy-bag-swap/

I chose to make felt pizzas.

They were super easy.  Just cut a circle out of cream felt for the "crust", a slightly smaller circle our of red for the "sauce", circles out of a dark red for the "pepperoni", odd shaped almost circles out of brown for the "sausage" or "hamburger", green squares for "peppers", white squares for "onions", and I used grey felt for mushrooms.  I printed an outline of the mushroom on cardstock and traced it so it looked pretty close.



On the day of the exchange, we all met at our local library.  You just went around and took one of each of the different activities.  Now I have 21 different things to keep my toddler busy!  As you can see from the pictures below, some of the ideas were pretty elaborate; others were really simple.  But, he will love playing with all of them!

TODDLER BUSY BAGS

PomPom Sort	PomPom Stuff It	Pasta Color Sort
Pipe Cleaner Stuff It	Felt Fishies	Fruit Loop Color Sort
Playdoh	Memory Game	Popsicle Stick Puzzle
Number Wheel	Color-Your-Own Butterflies	Edible Bracelets
Sand Seek-and-Find	Chalkboard	"Bird" and "Worms"
Gel Writer	Alphabet Letter Match	Paint Chip Sort
Make-Your-Own Butterflies	Color Wheel	Felt Pizza