Busy Bags do just what their name says. They are activities designed to keep your toddler engaged an entertained. What sets these activities apart is that they are stored in individual bags. Not only does this help keep the activity materials organized, but it also makes them easy for on the go activities. We always grab a few of these bags before heading out to dinner or a doctors appointment. 

 The insrpitation for these busy bags comes from our local library. 

First things first, you need bags! Considering that many of these printables are full size sheets, we needed to find bags that were large enough. As always, Amazon was the first place I looked and was able to find the perfect bag at a great price. I ordered a 10 pack of bags from this link.

When it comes to printing, I printed on 65 lb cardstock paper. But knowing my girls and how rowdy they can get with their activities, I knew that wasn’t enough. I chose to laminate them as well.

Now I don’t want to sound like a crazy person here, but I am seriously obsessed with my laminating machine. I also purchased it from Amazon. The machine comes with 10 laminating pouches but I found they were barely big enough for a 8×10 sheet of paper so I purchased a 100 pack from Amazon and they work perfectly. You can find them here.

Not only does this laminating machine have the ability to laminate, but it also has an edge rounder (you can see this being put to use in many of the printables below) as well as a paper cutter that cuts in three different styles.

So if you are in search for a laminating machine, I cannot recommend this one enough. You can find it here on Amazon. 

Other supplies you will need for these busy bags:

-Hole Punch (if you don’t have on on hand, you can get a cheap one here.)

-String

-PomPoms (or some colored circle item for the caterpillar counting activity)

With each of these activities, I sat and walked my daughter through them the first time through. From there, she was able to do them on her own.

As I mentioned, we take these bags with us everywhere and they are such a good way to entertain them while still maintaining an educational aspect.

As our children have grown, we’ve continued to make busy bags for them! If you feel that your child is ready for more advanced concepts in their busy bags, be sure to check out this post! 

A few weeks ago I purchased a I Spy style book for Emmy and she requests to do it just about every day. So i wanted to recreate the concept in a printable. This comes with three themes: under the sea, trucks and tractors, and cats and dogs. 

Since these were laminated, I was able to give Emmy a dry erase marker and she circled the objects as she found them. 

Download using the link at the end of this post. 

We first made a threading activity using a cardboard cirle from a pizza box. More on that activity in our “Activities for two year olds” post. 

I wanted to make it a little more challenging so I added color and shape recognition. The concept is for your tot to match the cholor string to the right shape, however if you only have one color string on hand, I’m sure they would enjoy it just as much! 

Download using the link at the end of this post. 

When Emmy did this activity at our local library, she instantly wanted to do it again once she finished!

The library had fun little objects in various colors to sort, but I knew it would take me forever to gather up enough small items that would fit within a busy bag, so I made them printable cards instead. 

You can download this activity using the link at the bottom of this post. 

Another bog shout out to the library for inspiring this one! 

They used actual foam blocks (which at the time I had no idea where to find them, but recently saw them at Lakeshore Learning!). We made the block printable, but if you happen to have the right colored blocks on hand, it would be fun to build color matching towers. 

Download this activity using the link at the end of this post. 

This one is very similar to our previously shared color matching counting activity, except this one has a fun little catepillar with each row.

You will need a set of Pom Poms or some sort of circle object (heck, you could just cut out the right colored circles from constrction paper if you wanted!).

Download this activity using the link below!