Busy Bag Tutorial - Memory and Matching Games

Last week I showed you the amazing busy bag we received from Emily of Dear Owen (HERE).  Today, I'm going to be sharing a quick tutorial on how to make the busy bags we sent to Ethan of Schue Love.  If you checked out Natasha's post, you saw that we sent 2 games - a personalized memory game with photos and a Brown Bear heads & tails matching game. These are both really incredibly easy to make and only require a printer and some card stock.  

First up, the personalized photo matching game.  I started by stealing borrowing some adorable photos of Ethan and his family from Natasha's blog.  Any photos will do, but portrait orientation ones worked better for the layout I chose.  I picked 12 pictures and then made a collage of them on Picmonkey.com.  I use Picmonkey for all my collages - super easy to use and basic collages and editing are free.  Once I had the photos in a collage where they were all exactly the same size and spacing, I just printed them out on my home printer.  

I cut them out, glued them to some red cardstock to make them all uniform and more durable.  Viola!

This game can be used in two different ways.  Since Ethan's still young, this can be a matching game.  Mix up the cards face-up and have him find the cards that match.  Once he's a bit older, he can flip the cards over and use them as a memory game.  Easy peasy!

The second busy bag we created was a heads and tails matching game using the animals from the popular and beloved Eric Carle book Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See.  Again, this one is so easy it really doesn't need an explanation.  I printed out the animals from a printable that I found HERE, mounted them on cardstock and cut them in half.  This couldn't be any easier.

I love this busy bag activity because it can also be used to teach different concepts.  Not only does your toddler work on the heads and tails matching, but you can use it to teach colors, sounds, animals, etc.

So there you have it...the world's easiest busy bag activities!  As I previously mentioned, busy bags can be as elaborate or simple as you want.  There's no right or wrong way to do them - if they keep your toddler busy for a few minutes, they're a winner in my book.

If you'd like more busy bag tutorials, make sure to check out the other bloggers participating:

Erinn at Strawberry Swing and Other Things

Colleen at Meet the Sullivans
Emily at Dear Owen
Julia at My Life in Transition
Natalie at Nat Your Average Gal

Julie at The Girl in the Red Shoes

Michelle at Ten June

Vanessa at Sunflower State of Mind

Sara at Running from the Law

Natasha at Schue Love

Erin at Hello Erin

Now it's your turn to join in on the fun!  We'd love it if you'd link up and share your favorite busy bag activity below.  We'd love to get a collection of all kinds of ideas.