How Do You...Keep Young Children Occupied During School Time?

How do you keep your younger children occupied while helping the older ones with their school work?

As of today, we have only five days of school left {woo-hoo!}, but Alaine won't begin kindergarten until our 2015-2016 school year so I have another year of preschool-age fun ahead of me. Alaine has always been content to stay near me during our school time.  She'll sit on my lap to listen as I read or she'll play in the living room, happily occupying herself.  She also enjoys a collection of preschool workbooks I picked up at the dollar store. However, there are moments in every school week when I need a quality independent activity to keep her hands and mind busy.

Benjamin is finishing his first year of kindergarten so his pencil work takes less than 30 minutes so it's handy to have a few activities at the ready for him, too.

Over the years, I have pulled together 12-15 busy bags that are simple enough for my little ones to do without my help and also clean up without a lot of hassle. In the second part of this year, I had to update my stash when I realized that bags that were the right fit in the fall-- matching shapes, counting, sorting buttons by color, and ordering lids by size-- had become too easy.


I chose to focus on the alphabet, letter recognition, and letter sounds.  I picked up a set of dry-erase alphabet cards at Target.  Some of the cards have the kids tracing upper case and lower case letters and some of them are about matching common objects with the letters they start with.

Another favorite is this ABC Busy Bag which also focuses on identifying beginning letter sounds. This free printable has 3 sets of cards-- upper case letters, lower case letters, and pictures. I have options when I give my kids this activity.  I can ask them to match the pictures to the lower case letters or the upper case letters.  I can also ask them to match the upper case letters to their lower case counterparts.

Around Easter, I picked up a jumbo bag of plastic Easter eggs at Walmart. I selected 26 eggs of a variety of colors and with a Sharpie, I printed an upper case letter on the top half and a lower case letter on the bottom half.  Then I separated the eggs and put all the pieces in a gallon bag. I chose to make the matching letters the same color (ex. P and p, both on green halves), but for an added challenge, you could print the letters on different colors (ex. P on blue, p on red).  (See the original busy bag idea here: Upper Case and Lower Case Matching.)

Do you have ideas for activities young children can handle independently?

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Size Sorting Busy Bag

Want an easy learning activity that you can pull together with things you have around the house? 

Begin by saving a variety of plastic or metal lids-- from the milk jug, the pizza sauce, the yogurt, the peanut butter jar, etc. Choose four or five in graduated sizes. Arrange them from smallest to biggest and trace the outline of each on a sheet of heavy paper.   You can label the paper like I did (or not!). 

Give your child the lids and the paper and have them match the sizes. 

It's a simple as that. 

Do you have any simple learning ideas?

A Number Gobbling Busy Bag (with free PDF download!)

Sharks and boys seem to go together.  That's what makes this busy bag so perfect for Benjamin, my 4-year-old who dislikes the idea of sitting down to do school, but loves the idea of an activity or game! 

The Number Gobbling Busy Bag teaches counting and number recognition and introduces preschoolers to the concepts of 'greater than' and 'less than' with a fun, hands-on game. 

Younger children count the colorful stars on each card and choose a shark to eat the larger amount. 

Older children switch to cards with written numerals and choose a shark to eat the larger number. 

 

Would you like to print one for your preschooler?
Click here for your FREE download!

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Busy bags are an excellent way to engage toddlers and preschoolers while the older children are doing schoolwork or homework.  They are also a way to occupy children who need to be quiet during church or at the doctor's office.  I am gradually introducing new busy bags into our morning school time with my 2-year-old and 4-year old. 

Would you be interested in hearing  about some of our other busy bags? 

A Simple Shapes Busy Bag

In addition to finishing up my own 31 Day Series, I'm also linking up to Allyson's final day of her series, Busy Bags and Quiet Time Activities.

This is the first year that I've had a separate bin of learning activities for my younger children.  You see, until this year, they were all my younger children and we learned everything together.  But this year, we're tackling things like cursive writing and long division and astronomy so I figured it wouldn't hurt to have an arsenal of fun activities and diversions for my pre-school set.  I keep a plastic bin (in a pretty color that matches my dining room, of course)  on the top of my hutch and only bring it down when I want to share an activity with my 2- or 4-year-olds. 

A few months ago I printed  these FREE shape flash cards, but I was undecided on what to do with them.  One day when Maddie (8) was showing them to Alaine (2), she suggested I cut corresponding shapes out of cardboard and let Alaine match them up.  Great idea! 











Alaine (and Ben, too) love to say the shape names out loud while they're working.  I love that Ben (4) calls a heart a Valentine and that Alaine tries to pronounce octagon and oval in her baby voice.  I also love that this activity allows me a moment to check an older child's spelling list without distraction.