What is a fun busy bag that will keep my toddler busy and help with developmental skills?
I have another fun busy bag for you today, so get excited for some sorting! This busy bag only has a few items, which is nice because it doesn’t overwhelm a toddler. Still, it has just enough things in it to keep your toddler busy for a fair amount of time. The busy bag contains an ice cube tray (I found mine at the dollar store, but this is what it looks like), small colorful balls, and two varieties of pasta that are painted.
I originally was just going to include the pasta and ice cube tray in the busy bag, but then I found the colorful balls from the dollar store and knew that they would fit so perfectly in the ice cube tray that I just couldn’t resist. The balls added a fun element to the busy bag that is perfect for my Smiley Man who absolutely loves balls.
There are a couple of ways a toddler can play with this busy bag. First, is basic transferring. I just had Smiley Man put the pasta, one piece at a time, into the ice cube tray. This develops one-to-one correspondence and fine motor skills. Second, you can sort the different types of pasta. I told Smiley Man that one side was for the swirly pasta and one side was for the shell pasta. I showed him how to do the first couple, but then he got the hang of it.
Once Smiley Man mastered basic sorting, we then worked on color sorting. I introduced this using the balls. I put balls (one of each color) on one side of the ice cube tray and I told Smiley Man to choose a ball, then find the ball of the same color and put it across from the ball. Again, he needed a bit of help, but then he got the hang of it.
Finally, we did the same activity as with the balls, but this time we used pasta. This challenged him to both sort the pasta so only one type of pasta was on one side and to sort by color so that each pasta had the same color across from it.
I worked a lot with Smiley Man when I first introduced this busy bag, which you might think defeats the purpose of a busy bag. However, now that Smiley knows how to use this busy bag, I’m pretty sure he’ll be able to keep himself busy with it for awhile the next time I pull it out. If anything, he can stay entertained for a long while just playing with the balls. :)
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