Busy Bags!

My friend Holly recently organized a busy bag exchange, and so I decided to make a little playmat.  The idea was for them to be small enough to be carried around in a purse or diaper bag, to pull out whenever you need something quick and entertaining, like at the doctor's office, or post office? driver's bureau? waiting to pick up big sister from school?

So for my playmat, it was easy to find printable ones online that were for cars, you know, roads and whatnot.  I found a bunch like that, and then I found some that were like for jungle animals and dinosaurs, and that was cool too.  I printed off those, and then I thought of all the little toys we have that would work so well with a playmat like this (see below), all the little farm animals and people and I searched and searched for something that would work for that kind of creative play, and couldn't find anything. So I just made my own, even though I don't have photoshop and wouldn't know how to use it even if I did. I think they turned out pretty well, and when I was getting frustrated and had begun spending too much time on it and the program had unexpectedly quit twice with unsaved changes I began asking myself, "who am I making this for: me, or them? and is it already good enough for them? yes, yes it is. so stop now and go to bed." and I mostly did. I think I only made two more changes after that pep talk. So whatever, not perfect, but good enough.

I just set my printer to print full page, and then I cut off all the white border, and laminated.  I have little baggies of toy cars, dinosaurs, farm animals, people, jungle animals, ponies, you name it whatever it will work I'm sure.

download this one, here

download this one, here

I found the rest on these sites:
Mini Road Map from The DIY Mommy
Intersecting Road Map from Be A Fun Mom (if you print more than one of these, the roads will connect)
Intersecting Heart Roads from Be A Fun Mom (my girls, of course, adore this one)

then my girls really wanted some that had the roads, but also buildings and stores and I was at the end of my patience with doing them myself, so a quick google search for "aerial view town cartoon" and I found these two.  They have the copyright image over them, but my girls just don't care about that. I am using it for educational purposes (right?) so I think copyright laws are void here.

Aerial Town View #1
Aerial View Town #2

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