Today we have pulled out our bag with bottle caps from the recycle bin to see which easy activities for toddlers we can put together for busy bags where the toddler can play individually. And we have come up and put together 5 easy bottle cap busy bag activities in under 10 minutes!
All of these are busy bags hold very easy activities for toddlers 2 years and under. (Parental supervision is required if you have a child who puts everything in a mouth.)
Reuse What You Have on Hand!
If you have been around for some time and follow our activities, you know that we love to recycle and reuse and many of our activities are with stuff from the recycle bin. There are so many fun games and toys we can make from trash! Plus, girls are asking for new toys and reusing stuff is the way to turn something we would throw away in a free new toy!
Why You Should Use Busy Bags with Your Toddler?
If you wonder what are busy bags, it’s really simple: busy bag or quiet bag is an activity you can prepare in advance and have at hand when you need to get few minutes to do something without your toddler under your feet!
You store busy bags in zip lock bags (you can also use plastic containers or cardboard boxes or whatever suits you best) and pull them out to give them to your toddler to play.
Make few when you have some free time and rotate them so it doesn’t get boring.
Supplies We Used to Make Bottle Cap Busy Bags
We had all the supplies on hand:
- bottle caps in different sizes and colors (from recycle bin)
- zip lock bags
- foam sheets (or color paper)
- hair elastics (assorted colors)
- buttons (assorted colors)
BUSY BAG #1 – matching bottle caps by color and size
How to Make: Just grab whichever bottle caps you have in pairs and throw them in the bag.
How to Play: Give all bottle caps at once to your toddler to match pairs – bottle caps of same colors and sizes.
You can make it less challenging with only one pair of each color and let them name colors as they find pairs.
Learning Benefits: This no money spent activity is great for color recognition.
busy bag #2 – sequencing bottle caps by size
How to Make: For this activity, you will need to have a larger stash of bottle caps. We used a mix of plastic and metal bottle caps in different sizes. They should all fit inside the largest bottle cap (in this case it’s from a jar).
How to Play: Mix all the caps. Ask toddler to sort bottle caps from smallest to the largest. Mix them again. And then from the largest to the smallest.
Learning Benefits: Concepts toddlers will learn with this simple activity are: the largest, the smallest, bigger than, smaller than. Lots of early math fun!
busy bag #3 – color match with bottle caps and buttons
How to Make: To set up bottle cap and button color match busy bag pick several caps in different colors and find the buttons in matching colors. As you can see in the picture, we didn’t have any yellow buttons so we ended up with golden button for the yellow cap.
How to Play: Ask toddler to match the button with coresponding bottle cap.
Learning Benefits: An easy activity helping toddlers with their fine motor skills (fitting buttons inside bottle caps) and naming colors.
busy bag #4 – bottle cap and foam sheet color match
How to Make: We used foam sheets because that’s something we had at hand, but you can also use paper sheets in different colors to substitute foam sheets. Pick several colors of sheets and add coresponding color bottle caps and place them into zip lock bag.
How to Play: Lay down foam sheets and ask toddler to place over them bottle caps in matching colors.
Learning Benefits: Color recognition, learning color names, fine motor skills.
BUSY BAG #5 – Fine Motor Bottle cap activity with Elastics
How to Make: We have girls so hair elastics are something we have all over the house. This way they are at least used for something good! Prepare hair elastics in same color as bottle caps and put them into a zip lock bag.
How to play: Place bottle caps on the surface and ask toddler to match elastics by color with bottle caps.
Learning Benefits: Color recognition and strengthening toddler’s fine motor skills.
Today’s post is part of 60 Day Junk Play Challenge and we had as material prompt today BOTTLE CAPS. You can also use bottle caps to create name recognition activity and work on letter recognition and fine motor skills.
To read more about Junk Play Challenge and get involved upcycling your trash for play, stop by our 60 Day Junk Play Challenge page.
