Busy Bags

-Product for this post provided by Oriental Trading Company, this post includes affiliate links-

I am always looking for activities to keep my kids busy, especially when we go places where they need to be quiet. I thought it would be fun to put together some little busy bags with activities in them that would keep the kids entertained. 

I found everything I needed at Oriental Trading. They have lots of different kinds of drawstring bags and I found these mini drawstring bags that were perfect for what I wanted to do. They were in 6 bright primary colors. Then I looked for some fun items to fill them with. 

I ended up with some lacing beads, crayons and notebooks, finger puppets, sewing cards, stickers, and stamps. I ordered enough different thing to fill 6 bags, one of each color. Although, there were a dozen bags and enough of each of the items that I ordered that I could have made two sets of bags.

The bags were made out of a non-woven fabric so you can't iron it. I knew that I wanted to label each bag but iron on words were not an option. Instead I just used a paint pen to write on the bags. I chose a silver paint pen so that it would show up even on the darker colors.

I stuck a piece of cardstock inside of the bag when I wrote on it so that it would not bleed through. A permanent marker would probably work as well.

The six bags I made were:

Coloring Busy Bag

This one I filled with a few small notebooks and some crayons. My kids like to draw and color so I figured this was something they would enjoy. You could also put a small coloring or activity book in here.

Lacing Beads Busy Bag

I ordered a set of lacing beads that came with a bunch of beads and a few strings to lace them on. I put one string and a couple handfuls of beads in this bag. I tried to get a good variety of colors and shapes and enough of each one that they could be used to make patterns. 

Sewing Cards Busy Bag

The set of sewing cards I chose were based on Bible stories since I figured we would use them for church most often. The cards were a little bigger than I thought they would be (I guess I didn't pay attention to the size when I ordered them) so only some of them fit in the bag and others were a little too big. I put 3-4 cards in the bag along with the strings for sewing. 

Stickers and Stamps Busy Bag

For this bag I added a few more of the same little notebooks I put in the coloring bag along with a few sheets of stickers and some little mini stampers. 

Woodland Finger Puppets Busy Bag

I ordered a couple different kinds of finger puppets. The first set was woodland animals which included, a rabbit, a fox, an owl, a bear, a frog, and a raccoon. There were 12 in the set, 2 of each animal, I put one of each in the bag.

Zoo Animal Finger Puppets

The second set of finger puppets included a giraffe, a zebra, a monkey, and elephant, a tiger, and a hippo. Like the other set there were 2 of each animal but I only put one of each in my bag.

So far all of the bags have been pretty popular with my kids. They all love the finger puppets and I would say those have probably been the favorites, but they have enjoyed them all. I'm sure there are lots of other fun things that could be added instead of the things that I have chosen, things like small plastic animals, puzzles, and little games, pretty much anything you want to add.