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How to Homeschool Multiple Kids with Busy Bins

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The public school teachers call them "morning tubs."  They're also sometimes called "Busy Bags" or "Quiet Bins."  For the sake of consistency, I'm going to call them "busy bins."  The concept for all of them is pretty much the same.  You take a shoe box, a drawer, a ziplock bag, or some other container and fill it with a few items to keep kids busy and/or quiet during school time, when they give up nap time, in a restaurant, while traveling, or wherever.


For this blog post, I really wanted to focus on fine motor skills or what I'm amusingly calling "The Finger Gym."  I've done a lot of research on the internet and have filled this post with activities that don't work on any academic subjects (that would be a whole other list).  If you search around on this blog, you should find many hands-on learning ideas for math, handwriting, and reading.


Classic toys like Lego or Play Dough make great busy bin items and help strengthen kids' fingers to get them ready for handwriting.  It's a good idea to get craft supplies like Big Melty Beads that can be used again and again to make pictures, scoop with a spoon, thread onto a shoelace, and many other ways.  Here are some more of my favorite toys for busy bins-








As I already mentioned, I had so much fun finding lots of good fine motor skills activities for our new school year.  I'm excited to set some of these up for my kids to work on while I'm homeschooling their siblings.  Which was the original focus of this post, and then I got too excited and blew it up with all the ideas.  Our current homeschool schedule had times for each of our kids to work in the "Finger Gym," which they're can't wait to dig into.


























Did you know that it's possible to get books that are more like toys?  These QUIET books (cause you know that's important) have lot of fun elements to help kids be happy wherever you happen to be homeschooling.  You could probably even find one for any theme unit you're doing this year.













To end this blog post, I'm digging some fine motor activities out of my own archives.  The Party Through the USA blog is my family travel site- which you should totally check out.  There's a whole section of Altoid Tin activities and other DIY toys.  As I mentioned at the beginning, I also have activities, which would be suitable for teaching math, writing, and reading.



















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