levy diophantine: TOS Review Crew: Activity Bags

In our family, we?re working on getting a ?centers? area in our home. ?An area where there are lots of learning activities, that the kids are able to pull out and play with themselves. ?Activity Bags was the perfect product to start our Centers Area with!

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Activity Bags is a wonderful resource! ?For $15 per e-book (or $27 for the Preschool Books 1 and 2 or Preschool Book 1/Science Experiments Book 1 bundles), you can get a treasure trove of activity guides for your child! ?Activity Bags have an absolute ton of different books, as well: ?Preschool (Books 1 and 2), Science Experiments (Books 1, 2, and 3), Reading Games, Math Games, Daily Activity Journals (Books 1 and 2), and even a special Travel Binder, designed for families on the go! ?For this review, we had the chance to use the Preschool Book 1 and Book 2, and the Travel Binder e-books.

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Basically, the program itself is simple, if initially time consuming. ?You get the book, and you decide what activities you want to do. ?The instructions are simple and included in the book. ?Honestly, for us, the hardest part was gathering the supplies, and that?s mostly because I despise shopping, and I?m forever losing the craft supplies I do manage to buy. ?But, they were not too bad to find. A quick trip to Hobby Lobby, and you?ll be fine. ?Or, if you?re one of those insanely organized moms who actually manages to keep her crafting supplies together, you?ll be gold.

Each activity fits neatly into a gallon sized plastic zip bag. ?VERY convenient. ?They all have educational qualities, whether it is pre-writing, pre-reading, cut and past work, fine motor skills, what have you. ?Everything is designed to work on mastering your child?s preschool skills.

My plan with these books had originally been to use it with the Twincesses (Caeleigh and Delaeney, both 3) and Sean (5). ?Preschool sounded just right for them! ?But? I decided to scrap it for the Twincesses. ?There are lots of amazing activities that I might do in there with them, but there are a lot with small parts. ?Namely, pony beads. ?Pony beads are a no-no for the Twinadoes, after many ER visits and a round of sedation to get a bead out of Caeleigh?s nose. ?You?d think she had learned but nooooo?. So, no pony beads for the girls. ?And, I don?t think they?re quite ready for pre-reading/writing. ?I look forward to using these with them when they get there, though.

Sean doing one of the color-matching activities. He really liked this one.

Instead, I decided to focus this just on Sean. ?This is now one of his ?quiet time? activities. ?He?s too old for a nap, so this works well. ?The Activity Bags all go in a tote that I had laying around, and they ONLY come out during quiet time. ?They work very, very well at keeping him busy and entertained, and quiet!

With the Preschool Book 1, you?re going to get 34 activities. ?With Preschool Book 2, you?ll get 33 more. ?Each e-book is available for $15.00, or you can get the bundle for $27.00.

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We were also able to review the Travel Activities in a Bag? which is a slightly misleading name. ?But it?s all good. ?The ?bags? are actually binders, one for each child to keep them entertained on road trips and the like. ?We love driving and traveling together as a family, but the kids can get bored long before Mom and Dad do. ?I was really excited to review this one!

The Travel e-book is not quite as big as the Preschool ebooks were (at only 89 pages, versus 125 and 129 pages), but don?t let that fool you! ?It is chock-full of mazes, mad libs, games and assorted activities to keep your kiddos entertained on long drives! ?With simple supplies (card stock and page protectors being the most used. ?Also a dry erase marker, a piece of felt to erase, a blindfold, dice, and a pencil pouch to hold it all in), this was wicked easy to put together, if time consuming to print out.

Kaitlyn doing the mad libs, this was her FAVORITE!!

The activities also include ?buddy games,? for your kids to play together. ?Which is the whole point of a roadtrip, right? ?Family togetherness and all that jazz? ?Activities to keep the connected with their siblings, and activities to let them zone out on their own, and still keep them entertained? it?s a win/win for me!

The only issue we had with Activity Bags was that the book is not designed for one family to use. ?It?s designed to be used in swaps, which is actually really cool. ?It can make it a bit hard to read and understand, and there are definitely extra pages to print if you prefer printing out the whole ebook and then going through it (like I do). ?BUT, this would make an awesome swap, and it?s nice that all of those instructions are laid out neatly for you. ?There?s even a special Swap Coordinator?s Handbook, which is FREE! ?For a swap, this comes with absolutely every instruction you?ll need, and lays it all out step by step. ?You can?t ask for anything more organized!

I did tweak some things in the binders. ?Most of it was simple, swapping out supplies that they called for for what I had on hand that would work just as well. ?I wouldn?t recommend y?all do that if you?re considering a swap. ?The one thing I did do, though, and would absolutely do again, is swap out the dry erase markers called for in the books with dry erase crayons. ?Markers don?t go over well here, and we?ve found the dry erase crayons to be awesome. ?I would recommend doing this, especially in the travel binder. ?Some of the activities are drawing and decorating pictures, so you might want to invest in a box of dry erase crayons per binder, just to have variety. ?And? they work REALLY well on car windows, too!!

We had a ton of fun reviewing these. ?There is support in the form of an email list and a Yahoo group, just for families and groups using Activity Bags, and, if you?re still unsure, you can fill out this survey , and receive a free sample from Activity Bags. ?Hope you have as much fun with these as we did!