Homemade Geoboards {Busy Bag Exchange}

I am participating in a homeschool moms busy bag exchange this coming weekend with 14 other moms.  We each made 15 of the same bag and will swap them out so we come home with 1 of our bag and 14 new ones.  Busy bags are great for our family for church, for quiet time activities, for car rides, etc.  This is the 4th or 5th swap I've participated in but the first one I haven't had to organize!  

I chose to make homemade geoboards for our bag exchange.  I got Mike on board before committing because I knew I'd need his help.  He cut all the boards for me (5 1/2" x 5 1/2" squares) and sanded them.  Then, I painted them and he put 25 nails in each board to make a 5x5 geoboard grid.  None of this was hard work but it was a little time consuming!  If the weather had been warmer I would have spray painted my boards, but it's not so I brushed acrylic paints on both sides of all of them.  

Although I only needed 15 boards, I wanted both of my kids to have one - that made 16...I made an extra for another family, making 17 and decided that I'd give these to the 3 daycare preschoolers I keep for Valentine's Day, making 20.  Mike was able to get 21 squares out of the board he bought so that's what he made.  21 boards x 25 nails each = 525 nails!  God bless him! 

(all done painting and almost 1/2 done with nails on the first night - we quit working at midnight!)

You can see he had some super stellar help:

Natalee might have my hammering abilities, but Xavier is actually not too shabby with the hammer and could at least tap the nails in for Mike and them Mike finished driving them.

This kids tried out their boards while dad hammered and I worked on the paper insert to go in the bags!

These will be great for us to build skils on and use for many years.

Here is what I ended up putting in a completed bag...

...a small baggy of rubber bands, an instruction sheet that I made on the computer (with a "small parts" warning on it), one geoboard, and a laminated double sided pattern sheet with this pattern and this pattern printed on it.

I'll blog next week about all the other great bags I receive!  It'll be SO nice to have a new set before the baby comes!!  (The organizer of this swap is due in March...she has the same idea...a new set before her baby comes!)