Toddler/Preschool Activity Bags

I mentioned in a previous post that a dear friend of mine came up with the idea of creating toddler/preschool bags for our young children this summer. The point is to have many things for our littles to do while or even before we are teaching the older children when we start school up again in the Fall. This dear friend asked for participants and ideas, then went to work creating the plans. We will divide the cost.

She did a fabulous job! We had our first meeting a few weeks ago, pulled our supplies and got our assignments. We have all been working hard in our homes to create these wonderful activities and putting each in a large ziploc bag. There are 9 participating children, so for each bag we make, we make it 9 times, and keep one for our own child. Tomorrow night is the next meeting to exchange what we've done so far, and just check in with each other to see progress and any problems.

Here is a sampling of the bags I've completed so far (with the help of my mom who was visiting for a week). There are letters, numbers and animal cutouts for the parent to trace and the child to use in various activities. Also bags of specific crafts. Each bag comes with a card or paper filled with ideas for how to use what's inside. Some bags have a "one time" use. Others are reusable or have many different ways to use them.

This just shows a sampling of what a child might do with this particular bag. It's basically filling in the bear shape with black beans. It could even be tied into a lesson on the letter B (bear, black, beans).

I will not be able to attend tomorrow night's meeting since my Alexa is sick. Even though she is starting to feel better, she will not be well enough to go tomorrow night. So, this friend of mine stopped by today to pick up my completed bags and give me my portion of what she has done.

So here are her bags so far. This bag is full of everything you could possibly need to make many paper bag puppets! I know my older daughters are going to want to join Evan for this craft.

And this bag is full of beading items! All kinds of things and a sheet of ideas to go along with it!
And here is her bag of yarn ideas. So neat!

But the "icing on the cake" is this....
She, working with another friend, is creating these "homemade" flannel board characters for many different fairy tales, and children's stories! All we have to do is cut them out and color them in permanent marker. I just started coloring this one to get a sense of how it will look. Aren't they wonderful?! She did a great job!

Wow! After seeing her bags combined with mine, I'm getting a sense of how all this hard work will pay off! I can't wait to see what all the other moms are coming up with! And we are only half way through!

And did I mention that some of the crafts and activities will be based on the Liturgical Year?! This really should be such a help to me this coming school year. It will be a fun way for Evan to "do school", too!

Only one thing yet to figure out......where am I going to store all these goodie bags?

TTFN

~Tina