One of the best things that I did to help prepare for Isaac's arrival was to participate in a busy bag exchange. A friend of mine organized it and was able to gather 30 women to each make 30 of one activity for either toddlers or preschoolers. It was a lot of work at 38 weeks pregnant to make the bags, but soooooo worth it! Our box arrived when Isaac was about 2 or 3 weeks old and we have been loving exploring all of the different activities. They keep the big kids occupied and I don't have to plan out as many things for our learning time. Here are some pictures of the kids doing some of the activities.
Nathan is shaping play dough into numbers and Emie is doing it with shapes.
Emie is matching felt popsicles with the stick with the appropriate color on it. The other side of the sticks have the name of the color written in black, so Nathan can work on his sight words.
Nathan is doing a bug match game. He has to find the appropriate matching bug and they are a few layers, to challenge a bit more. I helped Emie with it and it was good for talking about big/small, the type of bug and colors.
Emie is stuffing pom poms through small holes in a plastic container. Great for keeping her occupied and good for fine motor practice too!
Nathan is working on patterns with pom poms. They start basic and get more complicated.
I know the kids have enjoyed it because Nathan was wondering if Santa might bring him another box of "activities"!
When people ask me for advice on preparing for a second baby, I always recommend putting together activities for your older child. Someone recommended this to me when Emie was born and it was a life saver. While it was a lot of work to put together my 30 bags, it would have been far more time consuming and expensive to do 30 different activities.
Here is the link to where we found all of the busy bag ideas, in case anyone wants to make any of their own.
3 comments:
I seriously JUST heard about some ladies doing the same thing and so wished I had done something like that before Juliet was born! How great for you and your kiddos! The activities look very dun & age appropriate!
This is a GREAT idea. Maybe you could post pictures of all the activities...would love to emulate and curious to see what people came up with.
Thanks for adding the link!
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