Mummy Must Have Review | Flying Sprout Busy Bags

We're huge fans of busy bags in this household and have been for some time. With bub having severe food allergies from birth, her eye problems and the need for speech therapy, spending time at specialist appointments and waiting at hospitals became second nature. I quickly learnt keeping a baby {and then toddler} occupied while waiting for what can sometimes be hours is essential to maintaining one's sanity, so my love affair with busy bags was born.

For those who aren't familiar with busy bags, they're simple activities or a collection of play items stored in a bag to keep young kids occupied independently. The main version of a busy bag I've been using since she was young is a canvas bag packed with a number of different items, such as a book, colouring book and crayons and various little toys. These have kept her well entertained for the majority of the time. As she's gotten older I've swapped out some of the items to include more challenging and educational activities such as threading cards, phonics cards and puzzles. 

With a new baby on the way meaning lots of physio and hospital appointments for me at the moment, plus the need to keep her entertained when I'm breastfeeding once baby is here, I've been actively collecting items, printables and games to include in busy bags {so I have a huge stockpile of interchangable activities for the coming months}. I usually put together my busy bags myself with various bought items and printables, but lately I've been including professionally made busy bags as well. Flying Sprout is a really cool small business I've found that sell a huge range of busy bags and printables suitable for toddlers through to 7yr olds.

Flying Sprout is run by Bianca, a qualified teacher who's currently a stay at home mum. With 8 years of primary school teaching experience {and having been a numeracy co-ordinator for a period of time}, she knows the basics children need to learn to support them at school and she knows how to provide opportunities for children to learn independently to buid their skills and self confidence simultaneously. Each of the busy bags and activities offered at Flying Sprout are designed to allow children to learn and practice essential skills whilst having fun. Each kit contains an instruction card and all the items required for each game or activity. We've been trying out three of the Flying Sprout busy bags for the last few weeks and this is what we think.

APPLE BUSY BAG - NUMBERS TO 10

Tha apple busy bag is a great little counting activity that includes 10 jumbo paddle pop sticks with a magnetic strip {numbered one to ten} and 55 paper clips. Kids can line up the paddle pop sticks in number order and then put the correct number of paper clips onto each stick. This activity is designed primarily to focus on counting from one to ten, but it's also great for number recognition, sequencing and one to one correspondence which are all important foundation maths skills needed for school later on.

Bub can count to twenty already, but she loves to count at any given opportunity, including counting random objects when we're out and counting how many mouthfuls of food or drink she's consuming during dinner. I know it's not really normal 3yr old behaviour, but any chance for incidental learning is fine by me. Needless to say she loves the apple busy bag. She was counting out all the paper clips as she made each number on each stick and then counted all the sticks up at the end. Once she's finished she then repeats it over and over {and usually yells at me if I try and pack it up}. I have to put it away all stealthy while she's pre-occupied with something else.

ORANGE BUSY BAG - ANIMAL SHADOW MATCHING

The orange busy bag is a cute little animal shadow matching game that includes 12 laminated shadow cards and 12 mini plastic animals for matching. I love the simplicity of this activity and that it can be easily mixed up by simply changing around the layout of the cards each time. I also love that some of the shadow positions aren't an exact match to the way the plastic animals are standing which makes it a little more challenging. However it can also be made easier for younger kids who have a shorter attention span by using less animals and cards.

Bub loves matching anything and everything at the moment so this bag has been a huge hit and she's always asking to match the animals. She gets a little confused between the rooster and hen because they look similar and she calls the goose a duck, but other than that she's pretty good at it. She even got all smarty pants on us and was deliberately holding animals over the wrong shadows and asking us if they were right. "Is this the pig mummy? Oh no no no that's a cow". I have no idea where she gets her sarcastic personality from *cough*.

CHRISTMAS BUSY BAG - SPELLING WORDS

At the moment Flying Sprout have special christmas busy bags available including the christmas spelling busy bag. The spelling busy bag includes 12 laminated picture cards with the matching words and 85 individual letters that children can use to spell each of the words. The letters can also be used for other spelling activities like making a christmas story or using them in a sensory tub and many other letter activities.

Being 3 bub doesn't know how to spell yet, but she has known the alphabet since she was 2 so she's very good at letter recognition. She could easily identify the items from the pictures but some of the bigger words were a bit tricky to spell {because she kept getting confused with ordering the letters because there were so many}. So instead we've been focusing on the smaller words such as tree and star which she's had fun matching up. She puts them in order following the cards then spells them out to me. "S, t, a, r.... spellllls star mummy. Look it's a star!".

ALPHABET JUMBLE PRINT

Flying Sprout also have a few printables available as digital downloads. We've been using the alphabet jumble print as an alphabet matching game. It includes all letters of the alphabet in both lower case and upper case all jumbled up in the wrong order. Ours is laminated {so it can be used over and over} and bub's been using her clear glass pebbles to find the lower and upper case version of each letter. The letters could also be circled with whiteboard markers and then wiped off to reuse. She loves finding the letters and is now regularly talking about lower case and upper case versions of letters on a daily basis rather than just identifying individual letters.

All of the Flying Sprout busy bags that we've tried out have kept bub entertained independently for prolonged periods of time which is super useful for appointments and when I need some spare time to get things done at home. She's also made a lot of them interactive at times asking me questions about which move she needs to make next so she feels like we're playing a game together. They're a great way for her to practice skills she already has and to extend on her current skills through different activities. Most of the bags have extra game options added on the guide cards and the items can be used for other activities too {i.e. the plastic animals can be used in small word play}. I also love that the busy bags all come in sealed splash proof bags which means I can store all the pieces together so they don't get lost and it makes transporting them super easy when we're out. Bianca has clearly spent a lot of time and effort putting together each activity to make them educational, entertaining and fun for kids. 

Flying Sprout are currently having a 12 days of Christmas promotion with different specials for each of the first 12 days of December, to see the daily offers drop by their Instagram account or Facebook page. Bianca is also offering an exclusive discount for Finding Myself Young readers, simply use the code FMY15 to save 15% off any Flying Sprout products in the etsy store. You can also find other fun educational ideas on her blog, like this one about using m&m's and skittles for learning. If you have a lot of appointments like us, are planning a road trip over the holidays, going away camping or just need a few minutes peace while the kids are entertained you should definitely check out the awesome products available from Flying Sprout.

Do/did you use busy bags with your kids?

Toni x

*15% off not valid with other offers.

Disclosure - I was provided the three busy bags shown above for the purpose of review. All opinions expressed are based on our experience with the products. I did not receive payment for this review.

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