Sagan's Busy Bag

I feel like it's cheating to write a post about this because it was a project I made almost a year ago and I already exploited it for attention on Reddit and Pinterest. 

And I'm doing this post anyway.

So my dear friends have a son, Sagan, whom I have mentioned a few times already. Sagan's birthday is a week and a half before Calvin's so at his first birthday party last year I was big huge pregnant, and Calvin was born exactly one week after the party. Since I was on maternity leave, I had time (which I should have spent preparing my own son's baby clothes and furniture) to make him a "busy bag" for a birthday gift.

A busy bag is literally a bag full of things to keep your little one busy while you are out of the house and they might otherwise be bored (and whining). My mom used to call it a "bored bag." When I was a kid, she usually brought one that was stocked with paper and crayons, a walkman and headphones, a couple of different Wee Sing tapes, and a book or two. I spent many a Giants game listening to Wee Sing Around the Campfire or Wee Sing Silly Songs.

When I decided that this would be a fun gift to make, I scoured the interwebs for ideas. I was looking for activities that I could easily make myself or buy cheaply. I was also trying to figure out what would be age-appropriate for a young toddler. What I ended up with was not really age-appropriate at the time, but I figured he could grow into the stuff that he wasn't ready for. Which was almost all of it.

I already showed these in my last post, but here are the sensory bottles again.
Water + food coloring+ corn syrup + sequins.
Except the red one which is water + food coloring + oil.

Cards for a matching game.
Pieces of stiff art board covered with scrapbook paper.
I wish I could have laminated these to make them put-in-mouth-proof.

Ice cream cone felt board.
That dark orange scoop is supposed to be Thai Tea flavor
which was my favorite from Mitchell's until it was discontinued :(

Shape matching board.
Wood shapes covered with scrapbook paper + foam sheet + Velcro dots.

Stuff-a-Puff.
Puff balls + Ikea kitchen container with holes.

Threading activity.
Felt shapes + ribbon with buttons sewn onto the ends.
One button is bigger to keep the shapes from sliding off. In theory.

And here are all the activities including the ones I didn't make myself.
In addition to the handmade ones, there is a notebook with crayons,
mini play dough jars with cookie cutters, and robot finger puppets -
all purchased from the dollar section at Michael's.

I put each activity into its own bag and I put all the bags into a tote bag decorated with a big letter S.

So who wants to make one for Calvin? Just kidding ;)