Busy bags and crafty crate seats!

So, I have been rather busy the last couple of days making things for the classroom as tomorrow is the last day I am officially allowed in for the holidays - not quite sure what I'm going to do with myself for the next few weeks (my target is 5000 words written for my Masters dissertation... but we will see)!! 

 Anyhow, I promised you busy bags and busy bags I have delivered! I saw these on Teacher's Pet's facebook page - check them out if you don't already know about them, they have some lovely resources. The busy bags are aimed at Nursery/Reception aged children - but I've adapted them for my kiddos and really I think they could be used with any age group if you make them relevant. I'm going to keep them out in my room, and if any of the kiddos finish their tasks early they can go grab a busy bag. Here are the bags I've made so far; I have a few left to do which are work in progress...

(I've linked to the pages I can remember so you can make your own bags, if you want any others that aren't link then message me and I'll send you the files)

This is the letter detectives one, they pick a card and then have to find the upper and lower case letters on their sheets... I threw in a couple of magnifying glasses just to make it a bit more exciting!

This is my cupcake bag which I adore... it took a while to cut out the various pieces, I used foam, but it was worth it. I also found some cute recipe cards for the children to count out the toppings!

This is my geoboards one - there's some pictures for the kids to follow or they can make their own pictures.

This was the easiest bag to make - just some coloured lolly sticks and I wrote various 'tricky words' on them (we follow the letters and sounds scheme) but you can write any words you like.

This is my tangram bag with pictures for them to follow. 

This is the clothes peg counting bag - I numbered some clothes pegs to 20 and they have to count the dots and match them up - you could make it as hard or as easy as you want.

This is my pom pom patterns bag - pretty self explanatory really! There are options for them to make their own patterns too.

These are just the last few I need to make, I bought the nuts etc for the screw loose game but I need to find some stickers small enough to put on the nuts so they can swizzle (if that's a word!) them around and make their own words.

Finally - my crate seats (I am super excited about these!!) I purchased some milk crates off the internet, but I never expected British crates to be different to American crates - they are completely, so I was a bit stumped on how to make my crate seats!! After a bit of thinking, I came up with a plan!

My sister's dog (Tyler) found the seats to be very comfortable before I'd even made them!! I went to B&Q where the guy (begrudgingly) cut out some plywood for me in the size I needed for the bargain price of £1.00! I then bought some cable ties, some fabric and some foam sheets.

I drew around the part of the crate where I was going to attach the seat part - the American crates have a lip, so you just slide it in and voila, it's fits in snug and lovely.. but I had no such luck and needed to use cable ties to secure the comfy part of the seat to the crate.. so I used the squares to show me where to staple the cable ties..

Next, I cut out the foam sheet a little bigger than the wood...

...and then I stapled the fabric nice and tightly to the wood and attached the cable ties...

attaching the cable ties to the underside of the crate was the trickiest part... it's a good job the only skinny part of me are my hands, or it would have been a real struggle!!

...est voila! A beeeeautiful crate seat! I made a fairy one and a pirate one... I can't wait to put them in my classroom for the 'good sitters' of each lesson to sit on during carpet work!!

The total cost of each crate worked out to around £12 each but I think they're definitely worth it!

Now if only I had a silhouette cameo to make them look even prettier!! I am currently obsessing over them, but sadly I don't have a spare £300 to purchase one.. here's some of the gorgeous things you can create with them [here]

Enough babbling... tomorrow I'll post up my ideas for phonics and numeracy games!

Dani x