Color Clip Wheel and Submarine Subtraction

A friend of mine recently introduced me to the brilliant concept of busy bags.  The premise is simple: make several reusable activities that will entertain your child.  Store them in Ziploc bags and grab a few when you’re running out the door to go to the doctor’s office, restaurant or airport.  

By spending a little bit of time creating the activities up front, you save infinite sanity when you’re on the go later.  And speaking of tons of fun, grab our Editable Sight Word Games to make learning exciting and engaging!

Nine other moms and I came together to have a busy bag swap several weeks ago.  Each of us made ten versions of an activity.  (I was the official pom-pom push maker.)  Then we met up for a play date and swapped our creations so that each of us ended up with ten different busy bags.  My preschooler has been playing with at least one of them every day since and I have been amazed by the number of times that one of the activities has helped stop a looming public meltdown.

There are hundreds of busy bag ideas for toddlers and preschoolers but it’s much harder to find anything for children who are kindergarten age and older.  So I teamed up with one of my favorite new blogs, Boy Mama Teacher Mama, to create printable kindergarten busy bags to pass on to you.  Over the next three weeks, we’ll share six activities for you to print and make: 3 that build math skills and 3 that focus on literacy.

First two items for busy bag ideas?  Subtraction Submarine and The Color Wheel.

The Color Wheel

To get started, I gathered together a few supplies:

• Color Wheel printable (HERE)_
• Scissors
• 6 large clothespins
• 1 large label
• 1 black marker
• Lamination sheet to protect the wheel.  I bought a pack for $10 at Target.

I cut out around the edge of both the black and white and colored wheels.

Then, I laid both versions back to back and laminated them to make them stick and give them some extra durability.

 

Submarine Subtraction

To prep this busy bag, I first grabbed my supplies:

• Submarine Subtraction game board (HERE)
• 2 dice
• 18 counters: paper clips, beans, pennies, pom poms, etc.
• Optional: lamination sheets to protect the game board
• Optional: baby food jar to contain dice like the photo below

And voila! I had two amazing busy bags ready to grab and go while we headed out the door!

Want More?

Head on over to our shop to grab our super fun Editable Sight Word Games for more learning activities!