DIY Toys: Felt Busy Bag

Here's a lightweight and fun activity that comes in very handy during long visits or while waiting for appointments.

 

We basically sewed two pieces of felt cloth together to make a bag, added handles and cut out different shapes to form pictures or tell stories. Felt tends to stick to felt unless it's windy or if you  deliberately shake it off, so you don't have to worry too much about the pieces going everywhere.

What to do with the Felt Busy Bag 

1. play tic-tac-toe
2. create beautiful pictures or designs
3. form letters or words
4. take turns to tell stories, one sentence at a time, adding new pictures as we go along

I like to carry felt scraps and a pair of scissors so we can cut out new shapes that we think of. We use my husband's tiny beard trimming scissors(!) because it's sharp, precise and easy to use on felt. 

Materials needed

For the bag:

Felt (at least 3 different colours)

4 buttons

Embroidery thread 

Needle and threader 

For the felt stickers:

A pair of sharp scissors (a small beard trimming scissors works well for us)

Felt (different colours) 

How to do it

For the bag:

Cut out 2 pieces of felt of the same size for the bag (not too small - this will be your storyboard)

Sew them together using a simple looping stitch. (I used a pencil to mark little dots on the felt where the child should pierce the needle for each stitch.

Cut out 2 long pieces of felt for the handles 

Sew on the handles, using the buttons. (Children may need help with this.)

For the felt stickers

Make a list of what you want to cut out.

Cut out the shapes using the sharp scissors. You may wish to draw the outline on the felt before cut ting.

I like having a mixture of open-ended basic shapes like circles, rectangles, triangles, squares, etc, as well as some specific shapes like animals, and objects, etc.

The open-ended shapes allow the children to create freely and imaginatively. A simple rectangle could be a tree trunk, a dress, a table, while a circle could be the sun, a face, a flower or a fruit. 

With that in mind, I find that a few specific shapes like the child's favourite animals or tools could help spark off the child's imagination. We cut out their favourite story items like cats, fish, umbrellas, and baskets.

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What I like about the Felt Busy Bag is that it is really light, takes up hardly any space in my bag, and has endless possibilities and ways to be played with!