Sooner than I want, Gracie will be a toddler. A friend in one of my mom's groups is coordinating a toddler busy bag exchange. I participated in a busy bag exchange for 4 and 5 year olds last year and it turned out great. Even though Gracie is still a baby, I thought I would go ahead and participate in this exchange. It's always good to be prepared with fun activities for kids. If you don't know what a busy bag is, it's basically a quiet activity that fits in a bag that you can take with you for your child to enjoy.
For this exchange, I made an Animal Memory Game. This activity literally came to me in my sleep. I put 4 different animals on each 4x6 picture. Glued the pictures to the back of construction paper, laminated it, and then cut them out. There are 12 cards, six animals: pairs of birds, dogs, cats, horses, ducks, and rabbits. The child will try and match like animals. They will match a baby animal with its parent.
I made 23 busy bags and will get 23 different busy bags at the exchange next week. I love these exchanges because you get so many neat activities by just coming up with and making one. The budget for our exchange is no more than $2 per bag. For this project I spent less than $20, which is great! It took more time than money to prepare. Finding and printing the pictures, then assembling them took about 2 hours, which isn't bad. This doesn't include the time it took to pick up the pictures or take them to laminate them. I printed 75 pictures because I went ahead and made 25 busy bags. I love how they turned out and I really hope the kids like them. Each set fit on one piece of construction paper so this made them easy to cut and bag.
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| Pictures in stacks to glue on the construction paper |
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| Laminating the pictures for durability |
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| Ready to cut them |
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| Putting the game in the bags |
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| What the game will look like when played |
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