airplane entertainment

We'll be going on our first airplane trip with the girls this Thanksgiving. We are flying from NY to NC, and have a layover. Both flights are about one hour long.

I'm a bit nervous about how they will do! I want to keep them entertained, and in their seats (our laps!), without disturbing too many people around us. What can we do?

Any ideas on good entertaining things that are small and don't make too much noise? Too bad they LOVE their musical toys, but I doubt other people would like them as much! We are planning on bringing our laptop with a video or two...but what else??

 

A couple of things off the top of my head:

Box of Kleenex, they like to pull them out one by one
Magna doodle
Little figures that have legs and heads move (like Tolo First Friends)
Board books
plastic cup+little ball (you can hide the ball under the cup, you can put the ball in and take it out etc)
Anything small and cheap from the dollar store!

Also, lots of snacks and new snacks in particular

 

I brought tiny snacks. I wanted them to eat 1 tiny thing at a time, so I bought the little Grips cookies/crackers. We also brought our iPod and had music they liked which calmed them down. I did some recon at consignment stores and found a glove which had a different animal on each finger and an Old McDonald book in the middle. We brought that out midway through. Honestly I nursed ours a ton on the flight- as long as they would do it. I know many peoples' kids like Sophie the Giraffe- we have it and ours could care. ardon:

 

I found these cute board books that were also puppets. My girls loved them when we took them on a place at that age. Plus I liked that they couldn't throw them on the floor. Also, snacks and magna doodles. GL and remember its just a short period of time out of everyone's lives. Keep your patience and your sense of humor and it will be fine.

 

Oh books! Mine like to be read to a lot- it was hard for us to bring too many, though.

 

The concept that worked best when mine were young toddlers was anything they could fiddle with. One of Sarah's favorite things was a dog collar I bought at Target -- she snapped it shut, I opened it, she shut it, etc. for at least 20 minutes straight!

I also got a bunch of those colorful gel bracelets -- they're not safe for unsupervised toddlers because they can't be chewed on, but as long as you're sitting right there, they'd probably enjoy putting them on & taking them off.

And I filled one of those mini photo albums with pictures of people they knew, and we spent awhile looking at them and saying people's names. (She was a little older -- closer to age 2.)

The box of Kleenex is a great idea too, and not too hard to clean up afterwards. :laughing: Post-its would serve the same purpose.