Plant a Heart Garden Busy Bag

Today, we bring you this a sweet little Valentine’s day themed busy bag combining heart and roses. Two of my favorite Valentine’s day items! Plant a Heart Garden busy bag is an awesome practice for fine motor skills and apparently, great for pretend play, proved by my toddler!

Another thing we would like to add: this busy bag can be reused during Spring season and for Mother’s day!

Valentine’s day is really special in our home for one simple reason: it’s mama’s birthday! Does it answer a question do we celebrate Valentine’s day? Yes, in more than one way!

HOW WE CAME UP WITH PLANT A HEART GARDEN BUSY BAG?

One of the things I really love is to bring up items from recycle bin or things we already have in our homes. Some of these items are not really created with play in mind but it makes it even more fun when we turn them into tools for playful learning.

Same thing is with this Plant Heart Garden busy bag. Everything used came into our home at some point in the past – foam insert was a part of jewelry box someone once gave to me, and mini roses were collected from a wedding we attended in the past.

SUPPLIES NEEDED TO PLANT A HEART GARDEN

• heart shaped jewlery padding
• mini roses
• zip-lock bag for storage

HOW TO PUT TOGETHER A VALENTINE’S DAY BUSY BAG?

Setting up this activity is really simple! All you need to prepare in advance is to separate mini roses from bouquet and place everything in ziplock bag for later use.

HOW TO PLAY WITH PLANT A GARDEN BUSY BAG?

Toddler really enjoyed sticking roses in foam heart and “planting” roses. She repeated the whole thing several times sticking and removing roses.

At one point,  she came up with an idea to water the flowers! And then she remembered that her Dora (figurine from Megabloks set) has a watering can! She ran to get it and soon enough complete set was on the table, right next to the heart garden and she played happily with these toys / busy bag for next hour.

I’m hoping that this little busy bag will inspire you to look at the things you already have at home, stashed in some drawer and think how you can use it for play! And I’m sure you have a bunch! We all do! Kids really enjoy playing with “non-toys” and in many cases it brings them new experiences.

We used the same set of mini roses in another activity:
Counting Roses!

EXTEND THE PLAY WITH A BOOK

Introduce your baby or toddler to classic Valentines traditions like giving cards and candies with this adorable lift-a-flap board book. Simple sentences reinforce future language structure, and grasping and lifting the sturdy flaps helps develop fine motor skills. A perfect Valentine’s Day gift for your little one! Find the book here: United States | Canada | United Kingdom

It’s a shiny, glittering delight as you lift the sturdy flaps to help Baby find her very special valentine. Perfect little booklet to help babies and toddlers to extend their vocabulary. Flip and flap feature works wonderful for fine motor skills development! All kids love it! Find the book here: United States | Canada | United Kingdom

With short and simple rhyming text, the Llama Llama board books introduce Llama Llama to babies and toddlers before they’re ready for longer full-length stories. And their small size and durable pages are perfect for little hands. Find the book here: United States | Canada | United Kingdom

INTERESTED TO LEARN HOW TO MAKE THE BEST OF TOYS YOU ALREADY HAVE AT HOME?

We launched a serial named Less Toys. More Play. in collaboration with many kid friendly bloggers to do just that! We really believe that number of toys kids have is inversely proportional with their engagement with these toys.

OTHER AMAZING VALENTINE’S DAY ACTIVITIES TO TRY

For sensory play we suggest to try red sparkly slime or chasing hearts sensory bag. For crafts, try making textured hearts! As for fine motor activities, you can try heart button snake.

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