A Busy Box for Lu

Lucy and independent play have never been very close. She'd much rather be entertained then figure out how to do the entertaining herself. I finally decided to try to help her along. First stop, Pinterest. Of course I hit the mother load of ideas, even some I could handle. One that I kept seeing was a Busy Box. These are little boxes filled with art or activities that the kiddo can do all on their own. I plan to make it a special thing so she feels excited when she gets it out. I found a few of my favorite ideas and some that I thought Lu might like and headed out to the craft store to pick up supplies. I chose a couple from here and found this one on Pinterest too. Now I'm not the craftiest person on the block and you could definitely take a more creative approach but here's what I ended up with.

This one is a Number Wheel. Lucy can definitely count past ten so once she gets the hang of it I'm going to make an 11-20 wheel. The idea is to count the number of dots in each section and then match it with the right numbered clothes pin. Pretty straight forward to make with a wheel printable, card-stock, contact paper, and clothes pins.

Lately Lu has been interested in trying to sound out words so I thought this would be a good one for her. I took some notecards and added small words along with a sticker with the picture of what the word is. I picked up some plastic letter magnets and used contact paper to laminate the cards. Lucy will pick a card and then search for the letters to spell the word.

This one is another number and counting one. I taped the numbers on the end of pipe-cleaners and got some fun beads. For this one Lucy will just read the number and then count out the right number of beads and put them on the pipe-cleaner. Lucy likes beading and pink is her favorite color so hopefully this will be a winner.

I bagged all the activities into their own Ziplocs and added a Coloring/Sticker book and some modeling clay. My plan is to add in new activities every so often to keep it interesting. I am hoping that this will be a hit but you really never know. It could last for a few minutes or best case scenario she will ask for the Busy Box again and again. I will keep you posted!