Butterfly busy bags

For the past two weeks, I’ve been quite zealous in scouting around for ideas to teach the kids – especially my tot since he’s homeschooled. I must admit I have been pretty laid back for awhile, most of the time winging it by just reading to him to make up for my lack of enthusiasm in conducting ‘real’ lessons. Not that he minds – he’s really quite a bookworm and can ask for book after book beyond an hour.

So back to the main point of this post. I came across this butterfly symmetry busy bag over at All Our Days. It comes with a free printable (yay!!) plus you can differentiate the tasks for toddlers through kindergarteners. How perfect! It was 1am when I came across it and I just have to say I was bursting with excitement. The last busy bags I made were my Christmas tree busy bags which were part of my advent activities last year (yes, I confess. I procrastinated and never got down to doing the Gingerbreadmen busy bag in that list). But if you consider the velcro craft sticks I featured last week as busy bag material too (and indeed it is pretty cool stuff and stores really well in a tiny corner of your bag), then hey, I didn’t fare so bad, did I?

And so the story goes, I got off my ass and got down to printing out the printables, laminating the cards and cutting the felt. Actually, I did all that on my ass. It’d be quite tiring standing and doing all the cutting. I took about an hour from start to end because I made TWO different bags. But the results were very satisfying.

Apart from having the chance to use my stash of felt, the kids were exhilarated to receive their busy bags. My girl was very interested in BOTH the busy bags but I managed to persuade her to work on hers first.

You see, I sneaked in the concept of symmetry with this brilliant butterfly busy bag. While the little one’s (29months) happy making different designs of butterflies,

my kindergartener (5.5 years) gets to piece together the other half of the butterfly, based on the card that she picked. There are quite a few cards but there’s really no need to work through all of them in one session.

Here are a couple of examples of the card designs:

What I really loved about this printable is that blank butterfly cards are provided (don’t laminate those – but you may want to make extra copies) for colouring in the half of the butterfly after she has designed it using the felt pieces. It gives the busy bag another dimension and for my girl who loves colouring, this was really quite a hit.

The thing about the toddler butterfly busy bag is that there isn’t a template provided for the wings of the butterfly. You’d have to remember to factor in the body while making the set of wings, but that’s not a biggie.

While designing his butterfly, he also gets to practise talking about colours and shapes!:

We absolutely love these butterfly busy bags. Hop over to All our Days to get yours now!

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