Busy Bag: How I Created Mine

For the busy bag swap that Erinn set up for us bloggers, I drew Natalie's name and immediately started brainstorming ideas for her daughter, Blair. I searched Pinterest for a bit, became overwhelmed, and then randomly stopped by Target's Dollar Spot for ideas. I sort of hit the jackpot in the Back-to-School spirit as all of my supplies cost me $1 and the entire projected totaled $4. Yessssss, love crafting on a budget!

I made a letter matching game using a pack of flash cards, two packs of 18 foam blocks and one pack of foam letters. I also used construction paper that I already had in the house because I couldn't leave well enough alone.









I decided to add one letter to each foam block, which was simple since the letters had peel-off backs.


Then I thought we could just have the child match upper case letters to upper case letters. But it REALLY bugged me to see the lower case letter on the card at all, especially the larger lower case letters that would stick out from behind my block.




So I found construction paper in the same colors as my blocks, cut out a rectangle to adequately cover the lower case letter, and taped it right on there with my scrapbooking tape. I tried glue but it looked crappy and bled through my paper so I switched to the tape.




And voila! All of my flashcards were then a single upper case letter plus a colored square below. This way Blair can match up the letters but also the color of the block to the color of the paper. Two concepts in one!




I think that if using all 26 letters is too much, maybe Natalie can divide up the cards into groups and use fewer letters at a time. Maybe she can spell things out instead of doing the entire alphabet. But learning color matching along with letter matching is a fun educational activity that may take a bit of time for a two year old to master, but it's a start!

Do you have a busy bag idea? Link up with us below to share!