Click here to read Oh Christmas Tree Busy Bag Puzzle on Hands On As We Grow®
I knew I wanted to make up a Christmas busy bag to add to our Quiet Bin rotation.
We are all about Christmas activities, crafts, and games right now. When I was over on The Huddle and saw Lena’s fabulous Christmas Christmas tree puzzle I knew it would be a great busy bag for Christmas.
Are you a Huddler? I am. I love popping over to The Huddle from Hands on as we Grow! It is such a neat Facebook community and I always leave feeling inspired with crafts or activities that real moms are doing. So pop on over and chat with me, Jamie, and the other huddling Mamas — oh but actually just wait! Check this out before you start huddling.
This Christmas busy bag is perfect for the car, a restaurant, or just a snowy morning. It can be used in so, so, so, so many ways too.
I looked at Lena’s picture and got the jest of what to do. And great news – super easy.
First of all I cut a Christmas tree out of green construction paper (affiliate link). Well, that is not entirely true. First of all I went all around the house hunting for where I put the new pad of construction paper I just bought. Having no luck, I then went all over the house looking for a single piece of unused green construction paper. I finally settled on a ‘still-good-on-one-side” piece. (Right after I finished this activity and went to pop it away for next time I found … the construction paper).
Anyways. Once the tree was cut out I traced it onto a piece of plain white paper. Which was found uneventfully.
Then I cut a chunk off of the tree and traced it onto the white paper for my first puzzle piece.
I did this with the rest of the tree as well.
Finally, I decided on a skill I wanted to add to the Christmas busy bag puzzle. While the options are really endless, I chose to work on some simple counting with Ben.
My Ben is learning to count and is doing very well. We have not done many activities yet where he looks at the number and recognizes it. I thought this would be a fun way to introduce it.
I wrote the numbers on the Christmas tree pieces: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Then I drew dots that corresponded with the puzzle pieces on the white piece of paper. So where the number 1 puzzle piece fit I drew one dot.
When I introduced this game to Ben I would point to one piece and tell him the number. Then he would count the dots to find out where the piece fit. Within just a little while he had caught on and was doing the puzzle all on his own.
There are so many ways to use Lena’s puzzle idea in a Christmas busy bag for your kids.
Other learning ideas for this Christmas busy bag:
- letter matching (matching ‘a’ to ‘a’)
- upper and lowercase letter matching (matching ‘a’ to ‘A’)
- sight word matching (cat to picture of a cat)
- math facts (2+2 to 4)
- Even Christmas jokes matched to their answers to practice reading
These puzzles could also be made incredibly complicated by cutting the tree into many pieces, or very simple by cutting the tree just in half.
You could also laminate the tree, or use clear shelf liner to do a home laminator job, and a dry erase marker to easily change this activity often.
Pretty cool, right? Thanks Lena for letting me share your idea. And now let’s huddle!
Everything you need on one quick spot for fun this holiday season! These practical activity plans are simple enough to fit in your already hectic schedule. Make this Christmas season your child’s very best ever!
