When you are at a restaurant, in the car, or headed to the beach, do your children drive you crazy by fighting or by saying that they are bored? I have found several variations of a ‘busy bag/box’ on Pinterest, and decided to create my own. My bags have changed over the years accommodating items that will satiate my 4 year old as well as my 7 year old!
Below are some of my ‘Busy Bag’ ideas:
My Restaurant Bag contains:
- Paper which is kept in a fun print file folder
- Crayons that are kept in a pencil case
- Coloring books
- Lacing boards which are kept in a large pencil case or large utility baggie
- Laminated Road Maps that are printed and placed in a page protector sleeve
- Matchbox cars which are kept in a large pencil case or large utility baggie
- My Little Ponies
- Crayola Model Magic which is kept in plastic baggies (this is like Play-Dough, but doesn’t crumble as much)
- Laminated play dough mats which are kept in a page protector sleeve (this prevents the Model Magic from sticking to a table)
- Stacking cups
- Colored pom-poms or colored popsicle sticks
When my children were toddlers, I used to pack lots of board books, large Duplo blocks, finger puppets, Crayola dough, laminated play dough mats, stacking cups and Fisher Price plastic animals. For older children, add Legos, playing cards, trivia questions, the game Uno, books, Mad libs, and maze books.
My Car Bag contains everything from my restaurant bag, plus the following:
- Travel Bingo boards
- Books
- Small cupcake pans
- Magnetic alphabet letters
- Notebooks
- An Etch a Sketch
- Super hero figurines (most small items like these can be stored in an empty Wet Ones wipes container)
- Paper on a clipboard
- Stickers
- Small snack containers – filled with dry cereal and pretzels
- Granola bars
- Sports bottles filled with water
- Books on CD from our local library, or Conference CD’s from the NAPO-GPC library!
A fun idea that I started — on a 10 hour trip to Myrtle Beach — was to get baby links from the dollar store and connect them from one car hook to the one across from it in the backseat, and a super hero traveled link to link every hour that passed. Also, since each of my children had a small version of the car bag next to them, with each activity organized inside a smaller container, there were no melt downs!
Taking a family of four to the beach is like a jigsaw puzzle. Everything needs to be organized and in a certain area or else it will be covered in sand or forgotten. Thanks to many invites to Thirty One parties I am well prepared for the beach with bags!
My Beach Bag is a system of smaller bags:
- My pocket tote holds my cellphone, cash, my son’s EpiPen, inhalers, a sunscreen stick, baby powder, and sunscreen, plus a zinc stick (for my son who fries in the sun)
- My large utility tote holds hats, my long sleeve shirt, my children’s extra rash shirts, four beach towels and my blanket that rolls up
- My large zipper pouch holds my husband’s iPad and my Kindle
- Another zipper pouch is filled with a small blank pad, small coloring books, mini markers and a small My Little Pony. (This pouch was added after thinking that just the beach toys would occupy my 3 year old last year.)
Staying organized, even on vacation, helps to keep my sanity, as well as my husband’s when the ice cream man rings his bell and both children start running towards him. All he has to do is reach in the pouch for the money and not waste any time looking for it. I hope I have inspired you to create your own “Bags” for whatever situation calls for it.
Have fun and safe travels this summer!
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