Busy Bag Swap {Part 2: Plan It}

If you missed Part 1...What is a Busy Bag Swap, then you can catch it here.

There are tons of ways you can do a Swap.  If you are wanting to host a Swap of your own here are a few questions you need to answer before you start.

1.  What age of child are you wanting to create activities for?  There are activities geared toward various ages.  Do you want to create activities for 18-36 month old?  Or do you want activities that are geared toward pre-schoolers?  Knowing your "target market" will help you limit what activities you choose and which moms to ask.  We choose to target 3 and 4 year olds.  While I'm hoping that some of my activities will still interest Blaine (2 years) on a certain level, he was not the focus this go around.

2.  How many bags do you want to walk aways with?  I knew that I wanted to walk away with 20 different activity bags.  If I did this project, I wanted it to be enough to last me a while.  Enough that Colin wouldn't get bored with the choices. 

3.  How many different activities do you want each mom to create?  I've read some blogs where there were 20 moms involved and they each did one activity, making 20 bags of the same thing.  I can only imagine the monotony that must have come with that project.  At times I was tired of my 10 bags of one activity.  I'm sure it depends partly on the activity, but I liked the idea of doing 10 bags each of 2 different activities.  The only way I would create more than 2 activities per mom is if I had more moms involved, maybe 15 or 20.

4.  How much do I want to/can I spend on this project?  Your budget might be your deciding factor in how many bags you make.  We wanted to keep each mom's cost between $20 and $40.  Our mom's agreed that we succeeded in that allowance.

5.  How do I want to do the exchange?  You can have the swap exchange by mail if you are including moms from a different state.  Each mom would just be responsible for the shipping of the activities she made to you, and she would need to include payment in her box for you to mail a box back to her with all the exchanged activities.  If you are going to do this, and are stateside, I would highly recommend making use of USPS and their offer to pick up your package at your front door.  That way you aren't toting 9 boxes down to the post office.  If you are considering doing this via mail, I would just be sure to calculate the shipping costs into the overall budget.   The second, and I believe, more common exchange is to host a Playdate; which is what we choose.  Once you decide what type of exchange you want to have that will also help you determine who to ask to participate.

Once you have those questions answered it will help everything else to fall into place!  Here's what we chose for our Swap:  Focusing on 3 and 4 year old kids. (We have a few moms whose kids are technically 2, but they looked over the projects and thought that their kids could benefit from them!) We had 10 moms total, each making 10 bags each of 2 different activities. We wanted to keep each mom's spending budget between $20 and $40.

Next Step:

1.  Gather Ideas for Activities!  If you can have your activity list done before you get your moms it will help your timetable move along more quickly.  Marque and I split this task down the middle.  We each had a goal to locate 10-12 activities that we thought would be beneficial.  If you come back for Part 3, I will have our complete list of activities that we choose from.  You don't even have to do any research if you don't want to.  :)  In our compilation we listed the project, the web link for reference, and a list of the supplies needed for the project.  If you want to search it out on your own, you can Google "Busy Bag Ideas" and you'll have ton's of links pop up.  You can also search on Pinterest and come up with quite a few links.

2.  Locate MOMS!  It's important to inform your "intended target" of the estimated cost of the project and the time commitment it will take to complete it!  Most of our moms agreed it took more time than they thought it would.  Some had unexpected "hiccups" along the way.  (I had many!)  On average our moms spent anywhere from 6-10 hours completing their projects!  As I said in my previous post, this is not for the faint of heart!!!  We started with our list of 10 moms that we thought would be interested.  We gave them a brief overview of the project and asked them for a  response by a designated time so that we could move on to the next mom if she wasn't interested.  We had a few say no, and we had to do a little digging to find a few more participants, but they were out there!!!  I think it took us about a week and a half total to get the 10 moms we wanted "locked-in".  And just to make it as easy as possible for you, click here to open up a copy of the first email we sent out asking moms to participate.  Copy and paste, and change what you need to!

3.  Email your moms!  Once we had our moms committed we emailed them the list of activities, asking them to look over the list and email us back, with-in a specified time (3-4 days), of their top 3 choices of activities that they would like to make.  Our goal was to get each mom at least 2 of their top 3 choices.  Surprisingly enough, it worked!!  We only had a few mom's requests overlap, but that third option normally helped to work it out.  At this time, we also gave our moms a few options on different playdate exchange dates/times.  Again, you can click here to find another copy of the version of this email we sent out.

4.  Assign each activity and schedule a Playdate!  Once your moms have responded with their top 3 choices, make your final list and email it back out with a date for the Exchange!!  Our Playdate exchange was very flexible.  I think we changed it about three times.  We had to wait on a lot of items to ship, some of which were on back order.  If for some reason one of your moms can't make the playdate it's no reason for her not to participate.  Just make sure she delivers her activities to you before the playdate so you can exchange them for her! 

5.  Get your supplies and create!  Don't put this off!  Time will sneak up on you!  While deadlines are also great motivators, you might be regretting it at 3 AM the morning of the playdate.  (I am NOT speaking from experience on this one!)  I do know that my two activities took me more time that I thought.  I also ran into a few bumps along the way, having to adjust my original plan on how to complete the project, and even having to change one entire activity.  :)

6.  Communicate!!!  Always a key, right?!  This is important from the beginning to the end.  Marque and I had to follow-up with moms from the time the first email was sent out asking if they were interested.  Make sure you are keeping up with your moms.  They have crazy lives too and things come up.  Make sure they are getting your emails.  Make sure they found all the supplies they needed.  Do they want to get together for a playdate on the side to put their activity together?  Did they under-estimate the time commitment; do they need to gracefully back out? 

7.  Playdate!  You can make this as simple or as complex as you want.  If you've been wanting a reason to bake some yummy treats and host some company, then this could be it!  Otherwise, plan a bring-your-own-picnic date at the park, or just a regular hour of play at a local playground.  Again, if there is a mom that can't attend just make sure you get her activities from her prior to the playdate and you can exchange them for her.

8.  Walk away with new activities for you and your child to enjoy!!  Keep in mind that some activities might take a little more instruction/help to begin with.  On some of the activities we choose there are a few different ways each one could be used.  Some could be used just as a motor-skills activity, but can also be used as color coordinating, or making patterns, or counting, etc, etc.  You have the freedom to use the bag how you want!


Make sure you come back for Part 3 for the list we used for our Busy Bag Swap!