Busy Bags!

I had been wanting to try some of these for awhile.  Moneysavingmom.com is a great blog (I don't follow many blogs outside of friends and family) for ideas to save money, things to do with kids, and great easy freezer-friendly meals.  On there, she has always talked about her busy bags.  I finally sat down and looked at them one day and realized that I had the material to do some of them.  She even has a plan to do a busy bag swap.  It's where you get as many friends involved as you can, and you each make a busy bag as many friends there are.  I posted something on FB about it but only had 4 people respond.  I don't know if that's worth the trouble of buying supplies.  I might ask again later for interest since it's summer right now.  We spend most of our time outside these days. 

 Anyway, my 1st busy bag idea was the pom-pom pusher since I had the supplies on hand.  Basically, cut a hole in the top of a container and let the child push pom-poms through the hole.  Allison played with it for 45 minutes the 1st time!  Since then, she won't play with it that long but long enough to keep her busy so that I can get some things done.

  My 2nd one was completely free to make.  A friend gave us some eggs, so free egg carton.  The Easter eggs came from a free egg hunt, and I got the markers to color the carton free at Walgreens with a coupon. 

   Again super easy to make.  I didn't have enough eggs to fill up the whole carton, so I cut it in half (I guess I paid for the scissors 10 yrs ago).  You then color the bottom of the egg holder with different colors.  The child then puts the egg in the corrsponding color.  This entertained Allison for 10 minutes the 1st time.  She also played with it the other day when I was trying to get dinner ready. 
  I'll have to buy supplies to make the other busy bag ideas but so far so good in keeping Allison busy.  There is a cute clothesline idea that I'll probably do soon because Allison likes to help with the clothesline outside but gets frustrated that she can't reach the 6-foot high line. :)