Easter Egg matching activity

Easter Egg Matching activity! With this weekend holding a fun-filled activity that will probably leave your home with lots of empty eggs by Monday, here is an activity that can put them to creative use this next week! 

Create a scene with construction paper. Trace the shape of the eggs, cut out the halves and then mix them up (i.e. yellow on top and green on the bottom). Then secure the mis-matched eggs onto your background.
Give the preschooler the eggs and ask them to find the matching pairs and place ontop of the correct images on the scene! 

For the younger tot (2 to 3 years), have the eggs already popped in half and ready to match together.  For the older preschooler (4 to 6 years), give them the eggs whole and ask them to pop open and match together by themselves.

Another version is to let the tot create the background scene with you!  Let them practice egg tracing (a hard skill for younger preschoolers) and have them run the gluing of the objects to the background paper.  They can also color or draw on the finished scene for more fun.

I saw a post on one of my favorite blogs (MoneySavingMom.com) that had ideas for reusing plastic eggs with egg cartons and realized that these little objects are perfect for developing finger strength as well as growing sorting skills.  This activity also builds skill sets of: color recognition, finger strength, object manipulation, sorting and grouping as well as skills in patterning and shape recognition.

Enjoy your weekend and may it be filled with the Hope that is found in Jesus Christ!

Straw Beads busy bag

With a house full of boys, pony beads or any type of bead for that matter is a rare commodity.  My three boys are never given crafts or beads as gifts. (I do have a basketful of tractors though!) I know the act of ‘stringing’ is a good life-skill so this activity is a perfect solution to our bead-less home dilemma!

About a year ago, I found a bag of my old beads that were collected from broken necklaces and bracelets so I pulled them out for my (at the time) 3-yr old and 1-yr old to try stringing.  For the regular little holes in the beads, yarn was too thick and thread was too wimpy.  We ended up using ‘plastic string’ which did work but wasn’t a good solution when it came to a finished product.  After watching the boys try to string the beads, I saw how hard this skill really is!  There is SO much to learn in life!

For this busy bag, I had my 2-yr old help me cut the straws with scissors (and I was on edge the whole time since it was his first cutting lesson!!).  The straws were a very good medium to learn to cut with because it was instant gratification – you snip and ‘pop’ goes the piece of straw.  Unlike when learning to cut with paper, the scissors just slip through and it can be hard to see what has been done. 

The pieces of straw become the ‘beads’ and this bag includes two pipe cleaners as well as two 12” hemp cords/string that will allow for different ages to use tools their little hands can handle best.

For more photos, go to the Facebook page under "BusyBagCentral" and be sure to "Like" us so you can get in on the fan-only giveaways! Orders can be taken on Facebook or by emailing from the blog.

Rainbow Bright busy bag

This is one of my favorite bags so far!  My 2 year old has impressed me greatly when playing with this bag.  I didn’t realize he knew so many of the colors; for example, he was enticed by the bright pieces the first time I pulled it out and he quickly picked up a red jewel saying “ooh, red” and then placed it on the red felt swatch….all without me instructing him what to do! 

We played with this again today and he was very excited to match all the items with their colors.  It took a bit of encouraging to cleanup after playing since he was so proud of his work and didn’t want to put it away.  And we learned that it was probably better to dump the bag onto a cookie sheet before starting since the beads tend to roll around and need to be contained during play.

My 4-yr old also enjoys this activity. He already knows his colors so the joy of this bag comes more from inspecting each item and placing them in different orders on the color swatches.

This bag includes 8 different colors of felt, sized 4" by 2", and has 3-5 coordinating items per color. As with all other bags from Busy Bag Central (if you decide to order!), the activity is contained in the usual zippered-top plastic bag....zippered top is important because little fingers can easily manipulate it for opening and for cleaning up by themself. *wink*

It also folds down very small so it's perfect to pack away into our Busy Bag Box of activities or even in a diaper bag if we need a project when out 'n' about. The felt is a good medium for the items to sit ontop because it somewhat grabs the gems and also lets the beads 'sit' instead of roll like they would on paper.

For more photos, go to the Facebook page under "BusyBagCentral" and be sure to "Like" us so you can get in on the fan-only giveaways! Orders can be taken on Facebook or by emailing from the blog.