MEGA BUSY BAG IDEAS Part 2

today I am pulling out my current busy bags my kids are a little bit older than when I first started my busy bags when they were preschoolers and toddlers so things have kind of changed around here and I wanted to show you what is new hey hey you guys it's christina from the purple alphabet I'm gonna pull out my busy bags today yes I still make busy bags not as much as I used to however I do have some changes that I have done along the years so my kids can still have some activities to do when I'm in a pinch and need something quick and fast busy bags are a great system to have its activities ready to go whenever you need them and they usually are focusing on fine motor and learning and all that good stuff they have suited me well when my kids were preschoolers and toddlers and even kind of kindergartner age too but my kids are a little bit older now we now have a six year old and a seven year old so those toddler busy bags really just don't work anymore but I have kept up some of them and I had a viewer request asking to see what my current busy bags are if you want to see the busy bags for younger kids I'm gonna put that link down below and then maybe up here in the card in the corner so you can go back and check those out if that applies to you as well but for today's video I'm gonna definitely show you what's new thanks to everybody who said hello in our previous video it was very nice to read your comments is one of my highlights of the day as I tell you guys if you want to leave me a comment say hi tell me your new tell me the ages of your kids or maybe you have a video idea I'd love to hear that too and if you are new please feel free to subscribe we do educational activities for kids and ideas and inspiration so that you can learn through Play and a little bit hauls and a little bit giveaways in there too so let's get on I'm gonna show you my busy bag stash right now so I have busy bags in pouches like this they're pencil pouches that I got from Walmart and I like them because they have this kind of clear plastic front and I can easily see what's inside right away and I have multiple of them that I've collected over the years and I'm gonna walk you through all of them I also have different sizes these came from Daiso Japan and they have some pockets on the front and on the inside and then I even have some larger ones that are also for our dice of Japan just depending on the size but I don't have as many of these I try to stick with this size as much as I can just because I love that plastic window in the front it's just the best so now it's back-to-school time so if you're looking for these you can probably find them at Walmart I'd stick with Walmart or Target for these because they seem to be a little bit better quality than maybe Dollar Tree another 99-cent store and they've lasted me forever so these are my absolute favorite I want to walk you through all of my busy bags sometimes I'll switch them out but for the most part they stay in these bags these are in no particular order and I keep them stored in a plastic tote it's a large tote and I have them kind of filed stacked up it's kind of too big to show you on camera but I haven't stacked up like this another great way to store these is to get PLAs to get in that plastic those metal rings from Dollar Tree and to clip a couple of them together and you can hang them a couple of them together or put them together like a book just depending on how flat they are or you can hook them on here and then put them in a closet hang them in a closet on the hook put them on a hanger that little piece on the hanger that goes across so many different ways that you can store these but mine are in a plastic tub filed like a filing cabinet and it's just worked really well for us because my kids can access to them all right here we go my first busy bags and these are things that I've also shown you throughout my video so it might be familiar this one is keeping my story cubes as they fall out here there's some inside there's where they're supposed to go but my story cubes and because I have some of these these were from chick-fil-a so they're a little bit on the large side but I have all different terms of story cubes I just keep them here and that way my kids can grab this bag and go story cubes of things that you can roll and you create stories based upon the pictures you have they can do a couple different variations on them sometimes he's going my restaurant kits but because I have so many instead of just keeping in this little bag and I have these bigger ones I just decided to put them in a busy bag to keep them all together like that so story cubes are amazing I have a whole video on what to do with story cubes or storytelling amazing video if you want some ideas it's a lot of fun to hear the stories that these kids come up with this is an oldie but goodie I found from the Dollar Tree a long time ago I think it was thrifted living she did a video about using these as kind of a manipulative no actually she did a video a hair tutorial on how to use these for hair and I did a video about how you can use these as a little kind of fine motor strengthening manipulative building thing this is not for the young kids because they're these little ends can come off and there's like sharp wire inside so this is more for your child that it won't pose a danger to but I have several different ones I think I bought like three or four different sets and my kids will just take this and just literally build random things with them I think in my video I showed you how to do shapes with them or letters or just sculptures is basically what we do but it's like a fidget toy and I think I've thrown away maybe two I care there's one right here he could see the top came off cuz these are just a dollar so they're nothing fancy and they're not meant for playing as a toy they come off so just be careful that wire but for the most part they've been a fun fidget toy we have put them in a restaurant kit before there's a lot in here so I wouldn't recommend taking them all but they fit in there very well and it's just kind of a fun imaginative thing to do and it was very affordable at $1 per pack so there's probably about four packs in here next up this one I think was in my last video and it still applies today we were using it for letter recognition it had these little flash cards inside and had the words and you would match up the clothespin letters chew it for letter recognition and this worked very well for letter recognition but these weren't like sight words and they were just random words on these cards so I still have them because now that my children are learning to read it kind of stretches their vocabulary there's a little picture and things like that and these are laminated cards so I'm still keeping this one around even though we started this way back in like toddler age when we were working on letter recognition some people don't do letter recognition and toddler age and that's completely fine so it might be more of a preschool level but I still have that and all the clothes pins inside here have little written letters on them and so they'd have to find the letters it was kind of something that grew with us that I've kept around and haven't gotten rid of yet and I did do an adaptation of this one let me see if I can find that to show you another example of how to do this this is a different way so this one has flash cards in it and flash shots that came from the target dollar section they're called these first grade spelling flash cards and it's the same concept that we do with these so inside there's these picture flash cards and then on the other side they have the word and we would find the letter clothespin and then put this isn't the right one and put it on here to spell the word now these letter clothes pins are a little bit different they actually were in the target dollar section at one point and they have capital letters on them as they fall down and so we can match up the letters to the spelling words so there were something that was in the dollar section anyway and so I just went ahead and made a quick busy bag because it was down for me using the flashcards that I already have so that's another variation if you're interested in doing activity kinda like this but don't know if you can make these cards or get started with it this is another way to do it if you can't find these letters so I haven't seen them yet in a couple years you can always just write them on clothes pins I also like that these were a little bit smaller clothes pins too so if you're looking for an alternative that's definitely that's definitely a great way to do it and you can really pinpoint this too by pulling out the flash cards that apply to your child for spelling or maybe it is CVC words or maybe it's sight words and you want to work specifically on that so what's cool about this is you can really tailor it to what you need to learn and that's why I have these in like it because I can alter it whichever way I need to so there's two different ways to do those and I think those are kind of fun okay so these are in no particular order this is one for my last video - I feel like I'm cheating you but this is less of the test of time these foam blocks I believe these were a target dollar section find and my kids still like them inside I have some graphs they never use anymore they started using these and they didn't so they would just match up the shapes to mat match the colors on the chart and there's a whole bunch of them in here I made these myself on a computer a long time ago but they don't use them anymore they use them at first now they just like to play with these use them as manipulatives and so I've just kept them because they were a grapevine and I didn't want to get would it rid of them white yet but I'm sure pretty soon they'll they'll be on the way out and so I think they were like two packs maybe they just one pack from the target dollar section and then I made the computer matching with it something like this you can find these kind of foam blocks at the Dollar Tree they're just a different size and these are great for color recognition sorting counting stacking all that good stuff for the younger ages and as you get older you can do more complicated things like putting them on that graph and plotting them out I want to invest in those if you see them idolatry now I know this was not in my last video these are I can even open it up here I have another container inside of here because what they're doing is they're storing my wiki sticks or my wax sticks and I don't even think these are the name-brand ones I think they're they're one of the off-brand because it came with the cards inside this pouch so these are wax yarn basically and they're bendable they're a little bit sticky and you can make different shapes on them they're great for forming letters on letter cards but what they came with I believe I got these at Michaels these cards that you can trace all of the colors on so I bought them just to have the sticks they were a great deal and we can do all sorts of things with them incidentally I did see some at Target dollar section so I have a target dollar learning section video coming up that you're not gonna want to miss because there's some good funds in there and one of those finds are these little waxy yarn sticks I keep them in this look container this container came from Walmart it was like 50 Cent's and I keep it inside here altogether with the cards so my kids can just take this and go and when I was working on this video and putting all my things together to make sure I had it all my kids saw this and right away I wanted to play with it they really do enjoy this but you can also take those wax sticks and do all kinds of creative crafts with them you know do kinds of designs or maybe even do some words writing out words this is a more recent one for sure this is an activity that I did for geometric shapes and I did a whole whole whole video on geometric shapes and it has a little placemat for each one and what I wanted to do is put a little velcro strip on it but you don't have to do the Beco strip all the details on this and where to find it or in that video it's like 3d shapes just maybe a month ago so you have these cards and you match up these cards to them so they are 3d versions of each shape so there's a cone there's a cube and the dice and you match them up to all the cards to recognize 3d shapes in real-world situations not just picture I wanted to keep that inside the busy bag to have them all together it's a really great activity to do and it doesn't take up much space because it's got the cards and if I add the velcro be a little nice little fine motor kind of thing going on really do like that one here is my money busy bag and so basically this is a combination of things inside I have my money flashcards which came from the target dollar section and there's a lot of different types of cards in this pack so you can do different activities and then inside I have my bag of coins I picked these from the target dollar section as well because they have well they're more lifelike they're really realistic coins and they're not going to be dirty like real money because people say why don't you just use real money well it's dirty kids really dirty so these are plastic ones and they work just as well and they're a lot lighter in the video I did about money it had a whole bunch of activities on what you can do and so I did show you the Montessori three-part cards in money form and that's what all of these are so in that video you can get some great ideas on how to teach money starting it kind of build so that it starts with the very simple things and it builds on to harder skills and learning money and so I just have everything together in one so when I come back to it I can do several activities guided activities with them based upon the contents that are in here and it's all together so this one is all about money my kids will come and play with this on their own but when they're with me we'll do more guided activities meaning more pinpointed to what they need to know not just imaginative play and those activities are in that video I did about learning about money this one was also in my toddler busy bag and my kindergartner will not let me get rid of it she is loving this one she's always loved this one I just kept kept hold of it because she enjoys it in fact has been playing with it a couple months ago so what I have in here is a whole bunch of sponges cut these up from the dollar store and smaller little chunks and then a couple of them in there and then I have a water squirter tool I have two cups for transferring and then this is a garlic press from the dollar store so what this is is a water transferring activity so we'll fill up one of these containers with water so you should get a tray to do this and she'll soak up one with the sponge and then squeeze it into the other it's a great fine motor which is why we had it for that toddler preschooler age but she just enjoys it you can also transfer water with the squirter into one side and then you can also transfer water with this by soaking up one the sponges putting it inside here it's not going to work because it's not wet and then squeezing the water out of the other side which is one of her favorite things and so water transfer is an excellent activity to start at the toddler age and to work your way up it's one of those Montessori best practices to do and quite frankly she still likes it and enjoys it so I haven't gotten rid of this activity because she just loves it and won't I'm gonna keep it if she enjoys it so that's this one it's just a simple water transfer activity and she knows exactly what to do now and how to play with it another simple one that we have this one came from what was this we were doing I think it was a Halloween activity actually it's about skeleton so these are Montessori three-part cards and inside we have different parts of the body different bones of the body and then I also have inherent labels to label our giant skeleton that we make up from a dollar store so this one is all about the body bones of the body and so I just keep my three-part cards in there oh and it looks like we have another one here it's kind of small activities in that to our Apple parts of the Apple three-part cards too and all these are from previous videos I hate pointing you guys back to the previous videos but I've just kept them in two busy bags because they just thought they were really great activities so come fall this is a great time to do this because of the apples and apple picking and then in Halloween you have that skeletons and so we talked about the bone this one is kind of a mix of different things these cards came from a larger set so I'm keeping them all together here and once again one of the busy bags that I know I can grab and do several activities out of one so I have some word labels I have some picture cards and then I have in here a container separately of the alphabet lowercase and capital I've used this many many different ways and learning letters and learning first letter sounds last letter sounds and labeling and then also now I'm going to be using it more for reading so this is one of those sets that kind of grew with us and it's kind of stuck around so we used it very simple for a lot of recognition and now we're moving on to reading so I'm keeping them all together just because they kind of work cohesively they actually work with this little flip chart not flipchart pocket chart I've got these here let me show you the picture I kept the picture to show you all here's what it looks like I think I put this in my Amazon store it's from Scholastic I got it at Walmart I don't always see it at Walmart but I do see it on Amazon so it came with all of these cards inside and you can use it in this little flip chart why do I keep calling it flip chart it's a pocket chart in this pocket chart and it stands up on its own and so that's what it goes with but there's so many things you can do with it so I just keep them all together so if I need something to do a skill or something like that I have them all together in one this one's a recent busy bag - it came from the target dollar section not too long ago I haven't seen it again I hope they do bring it back it is body parts a little felt kids it's so cute I love this little skeleton so it has all these little body parts that you put on top of your skeleton and it's got like the girl here and then it's got you know the different systems of the body that you can go through and then it also came with these cards that describe the different systems of the body so I went ahead this was like a dollar I think and I just put them all together here to have a little body busy bag this busy bag is filled with my plus plus blocks and my generic plus plus box s plus blocks look like this they're a little bit different than the generic ones you can get the target dollar section and the ones that the target dollar section look like this slightly different they do not work together I keep them in the tubes because these tubes are great for traveling and take it into my restaurant kits otherwise I would just put them all in one huge container and not worry about it but I have several different colors that I've collected in the target dollar section they are a dollar the plus plus the name-brand ones are a little bit different price I don't remember offhand but I know they are more expensive they do come with seemingly a little bit more and and so I just keep them all together so this busy bag is great they'll usually pull out one out of here instead of all of them sometimes they'll pull out more than one because there's different colors in each to two little things I don't necessarily have in a bag but I still would consider them busy bag materials this first one is a complete the word set it's a puzzle set from the target dollar section has kind of more complicated phonics on it they brought these back recently for the back to school so if you need those they have those and then inside here is a digraph activity house with the clothes pins error and this is a free printable that we can go through and match up and do the correct ending sound these clothespin activities are great for fine motor and we started these in late toddler and preschool age and are great for strengthening those muscles in the hands so that the children can be prepared for writing oops and then you also had a dry erase marker in case you wanted to circle it these little sliding cases are from Dollar Tree and sometimes you can find them at Target I just put labels on them so I know what I'm looking for there this one is one of my larger busy bags inside we have this scratch pad so those black scratch pads and some tools scratch paper I guess you would call it so here are my tools I have different tools that came from make sure learning in this package that looks like that and then I have the regular sticks in each one of these does a different thing and then I have different size papers that we kind of collected I have the larger size paper in here I have cut I like a medium size that somebody else gave us for a present and then I have these smaller sets that also came from Lakeshore Learning I put a little binder clip on here so I can grab them and go for restaurant kits and so I just kind of keep my extra stock in here along with my tools oh look at me making a mess so that everything is together and ready to go and they aren't a little bit larger busy bag and so my kids can grab this and describe what they need to make their own scratch art or I can take some out for a restaurant kit and then also I have this one which is the fingerprint stamping so the pad came from Lakeshore Learning but you don't need to use this pad you can use any stamp pad and it's got like the full red boat colors in there and then inside I have some blank books in there some pads of paper basically and then a fingerprint book in here and this is a drawing book too so it's all kind of put together that they can just grab that and have everything they need to do the stamping all at once or I can grab this and take it with us somewhere all in one thing and it's ready to go this busy bag is kind of an interesting one it's the light boxes but inside it comes with all these letters to just kind of make your own messages with my kids are kind of enjoy putting us together it's not easy to work with I will have to say that but we got it from the target dollar section all the extra letters are in there so it was just another busy bag that I put together in one that they can use and they enjoy doing and then I wanted to mention a couple of things that aren't in bags but I just kind of have in these boxes and containers with my busy bags because they kind of get used together sometimes and I want to just to show you what those look like oh and then I have some other stuff too but let's do this first inside these containers like I said I like it because they all stack and they're kind of stuck together so I can put them all in my box and then they're labeled this one is this wooden Jenga blocks from the target out nope from the Dollar Tree I have a video on what to do with these and how to use those in activities these are erasers so I have in here rainbow and dinosaurs we can use these as manipulatives usually when we're doing the math we'll do those and then here are some more erasers too we have the Stars red white and blue and then we have some kind of unicorns and rocket ships and kind of things like that some bigger rainbows in here we have counters so these are gems from the Dollar Tree we use for manipulatives this one are gems from oriental training these were left over from a shimmer and shine birthday party and then in this one we have the heart ones from the Dollar Tree so this is all I have for manipulatives you guys this is this is pretty much it so we have the hearts the gems the the green ones and then the erasers and I think that's plenty and all we really need we have our dominoes also from the Dollar Tree so I have another video where I showed you how to do activities with dominoes and those are so versatile and they don't take up much space I also have a little container of dice that we use for many different activities and you can buy some dice from the Dollar Tree too and also what I need to show you are two smaller kits that were just kind of kept in these bags so this one's a telling time puzzle this one is a money puzzle these are both from a Target dollar section and I've just left them inside these containers because it was just easier I'm going to show you these two because Target has these in their dollar section right now and they came with some magnetic boards which I'm not showing you because they're kind of on a different shelf and not with my busy bags but there's different letters and pictures that go with these they're magnetic and then there's some numbers here and so I just keep them together in a bag so if my kids want to use them with that board they can grab the board or maybe they just want to put this on our dry erase board that has magnetic it's like a magnetic dry erase they can grab that too so these are just kept here together as supplies that are can be used with some of the other bags I showed you or just separately on their own let me know what you think about these busy bags of course I know you guys like to read each other's comments it's one of the best parts about the purple alphabet is when I go into the comments and somebody asks a question and somebody else answered it love it make sure to click subscribe to see more videos like this and 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Channel: The Purple Alphabet

Views: 12,483

Rating: 4.9459457 out of 5

Keywords: The purple alphabet, preschool activities, activities for kids, homeschool, mom, teacher, busy bags, busy bag ideas, busy bag, activity bags for kids, learning activities for kids, quiet boxes, ideas for busy bags, travel activities, busy bags for church, restaurant activities, activities for preschool, diy busy bags, busy bags for travel, busy box, busy bags for kids

Id: susbI7P5e6M

Length: 22min 47sec (1367 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 09 2019