I posted a few weeks ago that I was going to participate in a preschool activity bag swap. I went to the swap and it went great. I recieved 24 different activity bags for Emily. I have given her about 7 of them so far and she loves every one. I am so impressed with the variety of activities and what she is learning from playing with them.
Sherri MacLean, one of the co-creators of Activity Bags LLC, agreed to answer some questions for me. She gave me so much wonderful info, it will be in two posts. In this post, we'll talk about Activity Bags and in the next post, Sherri will share how you can host a activity bag swap of your own. (Don't miss the free gift offer from Sherri at the bottom of this post!)
CF: Welcome Sherri! You and Paula spent 2 years field testing your first Preschool Activities in a Bag book. In your experience, what makes a good self-directed activity for preschoolers?
SM:What makes a great preschool activity for us is one that 1) cost $1 or less to assemble, 2) it needs to fun, educational, and require little to no help from Mom to do the activity and 3) it needs to have skill sets that help prepare the preschooler for Kindergarten.
CL: Having created so many different activity bags, surely you have a lot of bags around your house. How do you organize your children’s activity bags?
SM: We keep them organized in file folder boxes. We label them on the outside and stack them near our school area. You can fit 20 Preschool Activities in one file box quite nicely. How do your children use them? We take one activity out at a time and set the timer for 15 minutes. When the timer goes off they may open another activity ONLY when the first one has been put away, zipped up and put back in the box. And, if you ask our seven, eight, nine and ten year olds, they will tell you YES! They STILL play with the activities and ask to do them after school is over. One of the favorites involves stacking cups, plates, and bowls. They also love the matching activities and bead activities. Basically, they love them all and will tell you they are not just for preschoolers!
CF:Do you strategically bring out different bags at different times?
SM: Not really, unless we are working on how to hold a pencil, or small motor skills. We try to rotate them but they always have a favorite they could use over and over. Also, the great thing about the activities is that they can be used over and over again as well as passed down from child to child. Some of the activities do contain consumable items such as paper, which can be replaced easily to keep the activity going and going.
CF: According to your website, you have quite a few new books underway. Can you share with us what your Science Experiments in a bag, Craft Kits in a Bag and Math games in a bag will look like? What ages are they geared toward? When will they be available for purchase?
SM: Most people think we only have activities for preschoolers, but we have more books on the way that have been tested and are being prepared for print. Including: Preschool Activities in a Bag - Book #3, filled with 34 brand new preschool activities, three volumes of Science Experiments in a Bag (Ages 3 - 12), three volumes of Craft Kits in a Bag (Ages 5-12) , and Math Games in a Bag - Book #1 (ages 5-12). All of our books are in the same format, allowing participants to hold a swap with other friends. Each experiment, craft kit, and math game has been tested by over eighty different moms, and they love them! So, Activity Bags, LLC is not just for preschoolers.Between the two of us, Paula and I have 11 children and writing books in the mix, along with homeschooling, can be challenging. So, it is hard to say when all the books will be finished - but know we are working on them. :)
CF:A large portion of my readers are in the Denver area. Is there a way that moms can participate in testing activities for the new books?
SM:Yes, we keep a data base of moms who are interested in testing our new kits. All you need to do is send an email to www.ActivityBags.com and let me know you want to be on our mailing list for testing. I will add any Mom who is interested in testing to our main data base. Next time we hold a test swap, you will receive an email invitation with all the details to join the swap(s). It is really that easy. So far we have held to date over 30 groups of 20 moms. That is a total of 600 participants and 12,000 kits being assembled!
As a gift to all your Moms reading this, we would like to offer you a complimentary copy of our Ebook Sampler that includes:7 Preschool Activities in a Bag assembly instructions3 Science Experiments in a Bag assembly instructionsA 30 Day Challenge Devotionalhttp://www.activitybags.com/Sampler.pdfPlease feel free to write to us anytime with questions - we would love to hear from you!
Thank you Sherri!
An Interview with Activities In A Bag's Co-creator
The scary hostess
Tonight Joanne and her family are coming over for dinner. Partially because my back is still sore and partially because it is 101 out, I was not super motivated to do a lot of cooking today. I came up with a pretty simple summer dinner menu and everything has been ready to go since about 2 this afternoon. The ease of today got me thinking to how I use to prepare for guests. There is only one word for it - scary. I don't know why, but for the first 5-7 years of Pete and I's marriage, I became completely insane when people came over for dinner. The menu was planned out in extreme. There had to be 2-3 appetizers. Some huge hunk of meat, like a lamb roast or a prime rib. Of course the meat needed 3-4 sides to go with it as well as a homemade dessert worthy of a Martha Stewart magazine cover. ( I tried today to find a picture of this pumpkin cake I used to make each October - it's pretty insane.)
Well after all that planning, and cooking and of course cleaning, I rarely had a good time. Pete and I would fight in the hours (or sometimes days) leading up to the party. I would be exhusted when people arrived and after everyone left, Pete would swear we were NEVER having guests over again. I created so much pressure on Pete and I. It was ridulous.
The sad part was, that I really enjoy having people over. Having a meal at home is so much more relaxing and enjoyable than going out. With kids now in the mix, resturants are always a sad disaster and babysitters get expensive.
Sometime in the last 2 years, I finally realized that my friends don't want to come over to my house to have a four course meal of fancy food. They want to come over and hang out. They want to let the kids run wild in the backyard while we eat stinky cheese on crusty bread. (Because what is better than stinky cheese among friends!) What a relief this realization has been. The best part has been that we actually have friends over a lot more often then before and we go over to friends houses quite frequently as well. When you set the bar at prime rib and Martha Stewart cake - who wants to try to reciprocate!
So what are we eating tonight?
Chips with mango or tomato salsa (all from the store)
Dinner: Roast chicken, green salad (Joanne's bringing that), Orzo salad, and of course a loaf of bread with some stinky cheeses.
For dessert the kids are making us ice cream in our ice cream ball and I bought a pie.
Easy, easy, and I can't wait for the Heim's to arrive.
Adventures in Garage Sales part 2 - Should we call an ambulance?
Friday night I went to bed exhausted from a great first day of our garage sale. Although I was tired, I was excited about how much we had sold. I said to Pete, “I would feel that it was a successful sale, even if we didn’t sell one thing tomorrow.” Oh if only I knew what a prophet I was! Saturday morning, while I was trying to move a king size bed out of the garage, the frame came apart. I badly twisted my back. For an hour or so, I thought the pain would go away, but it only got worst. Two hours later, I couldn’t sit down, bend over or move my arms without horrible pain. Our wonderful friend Vanessa came to our rescue. She helped Pete pack up the sale and took the girls back to her house. Pete took me to the ER where we spent the next 6 hours. X-rays showed that nothing was broken, it was just a bad sprain. I was ordered to spend three days in bed and take three strong prescriptions for pain, swelling and muscle spasms.
While preparing for the garage sale, my time and thoughts were focused on all the worthless stuff that crowds our house. I kept thinking about the money I have wasted on toys, clothes and kitchen gadgets that go unused and are unappreciated. Because I am a hopelessly cerebral person, the piles of unwanted stuff made me start thinking about our family. Who are we? What do we value? I don’t think of us as being materialistic. I think of us as valuing our friends and family, not things that can be bought. I think of us as a family who stores treasures in heaven, not junk in the garage. But seeing all of our extra stuff piling up for the sale seemed to be evidence to the contrary.
But as I have watched friends come to our aid and Pete take such amazingly tender care of me the past few days, I’ve realized that we really are who I want us to be. We’re surrounded with amazingly generous friends who are willing to drop everything to help us. We’re part of a faith family who knows the power of prayer, and covers us with it. And most importantly, I’ve been freshly reminded of how truly incredible my husband is. He has juggled the roles of single dad, nurse, chef, chauffeur and Technical Product Manager (the job that actually pays him) beautifully.
I think that is the danger of having too much stuff. We get blinded by it. It absorbs our space, time, and energy. We start to think that all those things have value. We lose focus of the fact that it is indeed just stuff. So although this was not the ending I had pictured for my adventures in garage sales, it’s a perfect one for bringing my priorities back into focus.
** As for all the garage sale leftovers – they are going to Goodwill this weekend!
