Thursday is laundry day....kid's Busy Bag thoughts

 I have heard of this craze called the "Busy Bag."

And it has always taunted me...it had me thinking, "This is how my mind works. I would be good at this."  But when thinking it out I wondered if the planning and prep would take more time and money than the actual child's busy time.  

But this month I was given the opportunity to partake in a "Busy Bag Swap." 

That meant I only had to prep and come up with two activities for 14 kids. 

And we would walk away with busy bags for both Syd and Henry from 14 other kids. 

How cool is that!

While looking for my busy bag contribution I came across this idea...

The clothesline...which my children became aware of when our dryer broke this summer. 

I had some felt sitting here that I scored at a garage sale back when I was a teacher.  But you could totally use doll or Barbie clothes, real clothes, or paper clothes. 

  So I snipped out some shirts, pants, underwear, socks, and dresses. 

 The dollar store at Target had these tiny clothes clips this month for a dollar...

If Ed has seen me toss them in the cart he would have rolled his eyes and asked what I was going to do with those.....and I would have had no good answer...until last night when I came across this. 

Boy Howdy was I glad to have tossed them in my cart. 

I had envisioned little Miss Syd spending hours clipping up these clothes. 

But she is too little.  Or maybe I just need to try the bigger clips or leave it hang all day. 

But Henry went to town...

And then it hit me...I could add letter and numbers into this picture and he could clip them in 1,2,3 order or ABC order.  The possibilities are again, endless.  Or an older kiddo could clip his spelling words in order or clip up the letters to spell them.  (Let's all agree that spelling word practice gets to be a drag when you don't think outside of the box! - anyone need more ideas on this...maybe that is a future post in itself!)

Poor Charley was so curious what was happening with these little clothes I had snipped up during breakfast.  He wanted to stay home from school so badly.  I assured him that he could see and play with the activity when he got home.  I am guessing he will be glad he headed off to school today.  ;)

If you are a Pinterest fan...you can type in Busy Bag and there are quite a few links.  

Otherwise I think Pinterest automatically has so many ideas for easy busy bag activities.  

Someone recently commented they stay away from Pinterest because it is a time suck or a place where you end up feeling down because you don't cook, bake, organize, celebrate, whatever....like everyone does on Pinterest.  I LOVE Pinterest for the resource it is.   It is a quick place to find super easy and fun things to do with your kids.  I just tell myself not to be sucked in for hours or feel down that I am not doing it ALL.

Happy Thursday!