This is genius. Totally genius. So simple — but so incredibly useful — it’s funny. If you’re a parent to a toddler, you’re going to love this idea, maybe even try it yourself.

Read on about TODDLER BUSY BAGS …

If you have a tot, you know what “busy” means. Toddlers are intensely interested. In everything. Nothing’s exempt for my 17-month-old son — not the toilet, the kitchen trash and colorful compost bin, the recently washed and folded laundry, my sock drawer, the cat litter box or the $600 stack of nursing textbooks and yellow highlighters in my study nook.

Here’s how child psychologist and author Dr. Kenneth N. Condrell puts it in a Web article:

“Fired up by his new speech and mobility, the average toddler is a whirlwind of activity, and everything is an adventure. Imagine for one minute what it must be like to be a toddler: Everything is new. Kitchen cupboards filled with all sorts of things are especially attractive, knobs and buttons on … dad’s computer are extremely interesting; even the drain in the bathtub is fascinating as the water disappears. And since toddlers are still babies, almost everything is tasted and smelled. Toddlers are absolutely free spirits.”

Sweet, eh? It really is — sweet — which is important for us parents to remember. Toddlers aren’t terrors; they’re free spirits. It’s just that, for most of us, this free spiritedness is not convenient. Or tidy.

It leaves some of us with little time and energy to manage much else. I had big plans this summer to “work from home” on some involved writing projects. Work from home? As in concentrate? Hahahahahaha! Not with a toddler. His precious nap times are few and far between, and there is, simply, no real productivity — aside from his growth and development, I remind myself — when he’s awake.



FOR WE HOMESCHOOLING families (and likely for most other families, too) this busyness, this free spiritedness of our toddlers must be corralled, somehow, so we can teach. Other things — like housework or those projects I was hoping to tackle this summer — can suffer neglect, but school at home for our older children simply must happen, and it requires parental attention.

Last year, my baby was still small enough his mobility was limited and his naps were longer. We could get through a list of spelling words with little trouble. But this year? This free spirit PLUS teaching third-grade zoology?

Uh oh.

Alas, there is a solution for most everything, and, for me, it often shows up just about the time I’m concerning myself with the problem. Happened again recently when a fellow homeschooling mom friend of mine from Mishawaka posted she would be hosting a “toddler busy bag” exchange party.

Check this out. You’re going to love it, maybe host a party yourself.

So: Fifteen moms have each chosen a hands-on toddler activity — say, stringing beads, sorting foam shapes, pushing colored straws into oatmeal containers, stuff like that. Each of us has agreed to prepare 15 gallon-sized bags of our respective activity. I’m cutting up swimming pool noodles, for example, for stringing the pieces onto shoe string, and I’ll make 15 bags of them. Super easy because I lack the crafty gene, by the way.

Then we’re all getting together — at the park, no less — and passing out our bags so that each mom gets 15 different bags of toddler activities. Did you get that? Each mom gets FIFTEEN BAGS of toddler activities!

The bags are designed, then, to be available for our toddlers to dig into fairly self-sufficiently, meaning we might be able to teach third-grade zoology — Math and science are falling to me this year, can you tell? — while our little ones play with magnets or foam letters at our feet.

I’m hopeful.



THE BUSY BAG EXCHANGE I’m attending was arranged and will be hosted by fellow homeschooling mom and pal Christi Nelson of Mishawaka. She says the idea wasn’t original to her. (In fact, if you want today’s google search stat, “toddler busy bags” yields about 107,000 results.)

Still, I appreciate Christi coordinating such a genius project.

Here’s what she says about it:

“I love this idea of busy bags because I want my youngest child to be learning and developing while entertained during school time with the older kids. I don’t want to gravitate to television and electronics.”

Amen. And I can’t wait to give and take the loot. Fifteen bags!



Goshen News columnist Stephanie Price is a wife, mother, teacher, childbirth educator, midwife’s assistant and nursing student from Elkhart. Contact her at wholefamily@goshennews.com, 269-641-7249 or on Facebook at the page “Whole Family Column by Steph Price.”