How to keep kids busy on long flight
This post covers activities on how to keep kids busy on long flight. These 10 ways also include road trip activities for toddlers. It is surely going to be a handy resource for any parent, be it summer holidays, Christmas vacations or any other trip.
Without much ado, here goes some ideas on how to keep kids busy on long flight and Road trip:
- On the go Activity Sets and Coloring Kits
The market is flooded with these On the Go Activity Packs – an activity sheet/sheets along with the pen/marker etc with a holder within the pack. These are easy to carry and especially useful if your child is into coloring or even scribbling. It is one of the best ways how to keep kids busy on long flight. It’s a perfect on the go activity given its hardboard pages which don’t get messed up in stuffed hand bags. Hence it also is one of the best road trip activities for toddlers.
A complete activity in itself, I specially like Water Wow or Coloring on the Go by Melissa and Doug. Water wow is in fact a wow concept as there is no mess of colors. Children have to just fill a little water in a small pen shaped brush and when applied to the activity sheets, the sheets show color. As soon as this dries up, the color vanishes too making it a multiple times usage activity. It is very reasonably priced, more so given its multi time usage.
Coloring Kit: We usually carry it in one simple kit, their crayons, color pencils, markers, pencils, erasers along with a stack (10-12) of A4 sheets. This comes in handy even in restaurants which don’t offer any activity for kids. Ensures one peaceful meal for sure.
Depending on the length of your journey or the hours you expect to be on road or flights during the entire trip, you could pick a small one like a pencil case with basic markers etc or a bigger box or a big kit with everything imaginable (crayons, erasers, pencils, markers, color pencils, scale.. you get the idea).
2. Observation Games
Next on my list of ways to keep kids busy, are these simple observation games for children like “I spy with my little eye”. This is one of my all time favourite road trip activities for toddlers.
The way the game works is that every player takes a turn in giving a clue about an object that they see and the others have to see, find and name the object being talked about. For example “I spy with my little eye, something which is large, white and flies in the air”; the answer would be airplane. Useful during long drives, train journeys and drives through cityscape. It is a fun way to keep kids busy in observing and getting them more interested in the world outside.
3. Story cubes
A fantastic concept, which is a modern take on spin-a-yarn. It is a set of 9 cubes which when rolled together gives 9 different images, which need to be linked together to be made into a story. Typically meant for ages 6yrs+, it is a game which blends creativity, story telling, english and fun all in one. It usually goes by the name Story Cubes and can be bought here.
It is one of my highly recommended road trip activities for toddlers.
4. Singing Rhymes or Songs or a blend of both as per the age group
If you’re looking for how to keep kids busy on a long flight, you have to be ready with multiple options. Singing and rhymes is one of them too. You can easily plan to keep them occupied for about an hour with this.
Children learn a lot of songs and rhymes at school and otherwise and this option is mostly fun for all age groups.
We often do a blend of traditional Antakshari with english songs, hindi songs and rhymes. The way it works is the first player sings a song or a rhyme of their choice. The next player takes the last sound/syllable or alphabet of the song and starts his/her song/rhyme from that alphabet. The game keeps going in this manner till everyone is tired or the kids are hungry/sleepy. Check out this post to get ideas on food to carry when traveling with kids.
Fun game which puts kids’ energies to creative use and their vocal chords in action and gets them tired in sometime for the parents to have a peaceful journey. It is a fantastic way to also get the kids more acquainted with your traditional, folk songs and rhymes.
Best suited for long road trips, where you don’t have to worry about offending the other passengers.
5. Number and Language Games
There are so many of them. Now my 7yr old daughter has even started inventing her own versions. Anyhow, some of the games, aimed towards 5yrs and upwards are as follows:
Number Passing Game: Decide on a number. The game starts with one player starting by counting from 1 and the next player counting forward and so on. Every time a player encounters the decided number (for instance 4), the player says Pass or any funky/creative term you want to use. There are two versions of this game, the players could pass every time the digit is in a number (14, 34 etc) or every time the players encounter the number and its multiple (12, 14 etc). Multiples come in for higher ages (7yrs and upwards).
Name Place Animal Thing: One player says the alphabet and the second player says a name, place, animal and a thing starting with that alphabet. To introduce complexity, you could keep a timer within which each player has to answer, or animals have to be only jungle or marine animals, or places have to be only countries etc.
Spelling Buzz practise: As is evident from the name itself, practice spellings. What could be different is you can combine this with I spy with my little eye. Once they spot the object, they also have to spell it.You can even combine a small incentive with every 5 correct spellings in a row (like a small toy/ chocolate/ anything of their choice)
5 clues, guess who: Again quite evident by the name itself. One player thinks of a person or an object or a food (depending on the age you’re playing with), and gives 5 clues about it. If the second player is able to solve it in 1 clue it gives them 25 points, and so on till 5 clues 5 points. If they are unable to guess, then they don’t get any points. Again, reward could be something similar to spelling buzz: every 50 points or something the kids can get something small of their choice.
Something I would like to highlight. As a parent you also need to choose something you will get if you are able to 50 points. It just makes it look like a level playing field.
6. Leap-pad for younger children: Better option than an iPad or a phone
For kids, I prefer the leap pad any day to our phones and iPads. It has age appropriate games and they can record their own voices and even take their own photos
For ages 5 and upwards, you can get LeapPad 3.
Its better to get it from the US as its much cheaper there, even without the deals. So if you have someone traveling from there, you can just order it from Amazon through this link and ship it to their US address. I recommend buying a case too as the leap pad alone doesn’t come with a case. So if you’re getting an option of a case along with the leap pad, go for it as it comes in very handy.
We chose pink for my daughter and you have an option of green too. It comes loaded with a lot of basic functionality and games to keep the children occupied for hours. I usually take it out only when they are traveling so I never felt the need to buy any other games from Leapfrog in the last 2 yrs. It is something both my 7yr old and 2yr old enjoy.
7. Reading a Book or Reading out a story
Reading a book in a moving car is definitely not something which I would recommend for any child. For a drive, hence the kind of books you could take are picture books, large font books (the ones with just 1 phrase etc in one page with large pictures). Hardboard books are what I prefer, if I don’t have the space and the baggage weight constraint.
I also enjoy the books which I can read to my kids on our journeys together. Another great option is carrying a big book of stories in your luggage, reading the story beforehand and then retelling the story to the kids on the way. That way you can sort out the luggage issue and still be able to tell the kids stories from the book.
Taking a mixture of books is recommended: Story books that kids can read themselves (for a flight), folk tales that you can tell them, good night books, cloth books for babies etc. Some of my all time favourite are Akbar Birbal books, Ladybird I can read series, Julia Donaldson books, Good Night books and Peppa Pig. They especially like books by Julia Donaldson as they are almost like songs and my kids love to sing along with me, the whole book.
Take a look at this post for some of my recommended books and stories for kids, to be taken on any journey.
One advice: If possible, let the kids not read the books that you plan to take along for your travel.
8. Home Printed Activity Sheets:
This is something that I carry not just for the journey, rather for the whole trip. These activity sheets or worksheets are about the kind of activities and sightseeing that we intend to do. For instance, when we were going to visit the Meenakshi Temple in Madurai, I made a couple of worksheets with matching games and riddles about Hindu Gods and Goddesses and Hindu mythology. On a similar note, for our Nilgiris Train ride in Ooty, I made a couple of worksheets with crosswords and jigsaw puzzles around trains and their history. Interested in traveling to Ooty, you may want to check out this post.
Similarly, you could do it around festivals. One time when we were traveling on the Good Friday and Easter long weekend, I combined a Solar system scavenger hunt with easter eggs. So after we visited a Solar Observatory in Kodaikanal, I gave my daughter the puzzle sheet and with every answer card I put a small chocolate easter egg, which she had to hunt for in the hotel and restaurants etc. It was super fun even for my little one (2yr old) who loved hunting for eggs without knowing much about the solar system etc.
Visit this post to know more about best things to do in Kodaikanal. If you’re interested in the best cafes in Kodai, you can check out this post.
9. Card games of different kinds
A multitude of card games is almost a permanent fixture in my daughter’s flight carry on baggage. Its a mix of playing cards, Uno, Spot It cards, puzzle cards etc. If there are more than one kid, they can play with each other and if on a long airline journey you can play with the kids too.
Not all card games are appropriate for all ages and thus you’ll be the best judge to determine what works for your kids.
I would like to highlight Spot It: A fun visual perception family game (barring our little one of course). There are 55 cards which come in a travel size tin. Each card has 8 pictures on it in varying sizes and every two cards have one picture in common which the players have to spot. Once spotted, the player who spots the common picture with his/her card first shouts out Spot it and keeps the card. The player with the highest number of cards wins at the end. Interested in buying, you can find it here.
10. Small Toys which they are fond of (Cars and other knick knacks)
This one is a really simple trick which works great with the toddlers and older infants. Hide away some of their favourite small toys about 1-2 weeks before your travel. Essentially kids get bored with the same toys and when hidden away for more than a week, they will treat it almost like new on finding it.
The best option is of course if they sleep through the journey and I’m not sure if we can be that lucky every time we go on a trip, so these are my 10 ways to keep my kids busy in long journeys. Drop me a line through the comments section to let me know what are yours.
