10 Best free busy bags for long haul flights

We've done multiple long haul flights (24+ hours) with our kids at various ages between 11mths and 9 years. Here are 10 of our favourite busy bags for the 1-3 years ages group, made using things from around the house:

1. Beach balls. Hands down BEST toys we've ever taken on a plane. We took two and and used them A LOT at the stop overs in Hong Kong airport. We had so many random kids join in or look longing at our family playing with them. Great for all ages 2 to 42!

2. Things in a bottle. First version was paper beads made from junk mail in a bottle. This was definitely the  favourite for our 13 month old. Second version was pipe cleaners in a spice bottle, which was more interesting for my 3 year old.

3. Letter writing. This is my 3 year old's favourite busy bag, plane or no plane. We made a bunch of tiny envelopes and packed them in a zip lock bag with some pens, stickers, little notebook and stamps. Hours of fun writing "letters" to all his favourite people. (note: Christmas cards can be a good source of little envelopes)

Free printable tiny envelope - just for you!

4.  Small bag of figurines. We used old trashies that the kids had mostly grown out of. They acted out all sorts of adventures in the plane seat.

5. Fishing game. Made with soy sauce fish with an old screw glued in the neck and a magnet.

6. Buttons and a toy ute (pick up truck) and digger. A little bag with a collection of old buttons, and matchbox size cars was a big hit. We include a pair of eyebrow tweezers for non-airport travel, making it great for fine motor control play!

7. Small box with loom bands and hook and different coloured box sections. Sort the loom bands by colour. Even better if you can find someone to take turns with!

8. Threading. Pipe cleaners and melty beads in different colours. Match the beads to the pip cleaners.

9. Books. Any little book that your child might like. We particularly like tiny Pixi books and Thomas and Friends.

10. Apps! Our favourites include Mini Sago, Dr Panda and Lego Duplo apps.

Travel Cars Mat

These travel cars mats are something I made for a long haul flight a few years back. They were great on the plane; the little cars tucked securely inside when they were folded up, and they fitted easily on a little table or into a handbag. They were also great for other waiting times; at the doctors, at friends' houses etc. 

To make them I used some old curtains that had the white lining on the back. I hemmed them with bias binding, although the material doesn't fray, so hemming was just for looks. The bridges I made using fabric scraps sewed over some thin plastic (cut from whatever packaging rubbish we had in house). They're not super sturdy, but they do the job of getting the imaginations rumbling. 

I have a snap machine to put snaps on (which I bought way back when I was first pregnant and thought I'd be using in all my endless "free time" as a new mum making cloth nappies. Ha ha!). So I used snaps for the bridges, where I'm sure velcro would probably do the job. I put a couple of different configurations in, so that the bridges can be moved around.

The road I drew on with a permanent marker, and coloured in using water colour paints. I have seen some mums making beautifully sewn on roads. I like the quick and dirty option when available.

I finished with a loop of elastic sewn on at one edge, ready to keep it all together while it's travelling.

Simple Plane or Car Games

Here's a list of games I've collected (with our upcoming long-haul flight in mind), which are suitable for preschoolers in a plane or car or even in a tent on a rainy day. They should need nothing more than your body, or pens and paper (and the occasional piece of sticky tape).

Travel Games for Kids:

1. Odds and evens (pick odd or even, then stick out 1 or 2 fingers like scissors paper rock, count your fingers and your friends fingers to see if the total is odd or even).

2. Find 3 things starting with the letter…

3. I spy.

4. Thumb wrestling.

5. Stretch and wriggle. Find all the body parts you can wiggle.

6. Randomly select two body parts and try and touch those two body parts together. (Maybe make a spinning wheel with lots of body part names, or write lots of body parts down and close you eyes and pick, or get two people to choose one part each).

7. Try and guess who I am.

8. Write the alphabet, fill in an animal starting with each letter.

9. Write the alphabet, fill in a food starting with each letter.

10. Write the alphabet and find something you can see starting with each letter.

11. Draw a picture of things you might expect to see at your destination.

12. Draw a picture of a zoo.

13. Draw an outline of one or two people and then fill them in.

14. Draw an outline of a scene and then fill the picture in: a beach, the sea, a campsite, a garden, space etc.

15. Paper bag mystery. Put something in the spew bag and you have to try and guess what it is.

16. Guess the letter. One person closes their eyes, and the other draws a letter on their palm or back or foot. Could also be done with numbers or shapes.

17. Guess how many seats. Count them.

18. Hangman.

19. Naughts and crosses.

20. Close the square.

21. Make finger puppets.

22. Make a finger puppet movie.

23. Make paper clothes for a doll.

24. Make a puzzle (with square pieces).

25. Travel memory. Look at a plate of objects for 1 minute, then take the objects away and try and draw as many of them as you can.

26. Mr squiggle. Draw a few squiggles on a page and the other person has to turn it into a picture.

27. Make a scavenger hunt from a magazine.

28. Find something of every colour of the rainbow.

29. Find something in the shape of a circle, square, triangle, oval, rectangle, trapezoid, arch.

30. Tell a fairy tale from your head: 3 bears, Gingerbread man, 3 billy goats gruff,etc.

31. Tell a book from your head: any bedtime story you've told enough times to roughly remember by heart.

32. Make paper houses.

33. Make a mobile phone or robot out of empty fruit juice or dried fruit boxes. 

Mom's Mini Van and this site have heaps more travel game ideas.


Do you have any other good travel games?

Plane Activity Tray

We are planning on taking the kids on a long trip later this year. It will involve almost 60 hours of planes and airports, 6+ hours of trains, and a wedding reception, amongst other things. I'm not terribly worried (although a little more worried now that I add it all up and write it down in black and white) as I'm sure I can plug the kids into various electronics for most of that... but where's the challenge in that?

So I have been trawling the Internet looking for activities and ideas that can make the trip more enjoyable.

One thing that I saw and really liked the look of was an activity tray. I also liked the look of this table cover. I am still plotting a way to combine the two, but first I wanted to have my own attempt at an activity tray.

My guidelines were something slimline that could potentially fold behind the tray on multiple different types of aircraft, and yet a tray that was as big as possible. Preferably something big enough to fit the food tray on, so no knives and forks would be making a dash for the floor.

This is what I came up with:

Plane activity tray, Mark I.

I took the dimension of the aeroplane tray table to be roughly 24cm x 42cm.
 

I chose sides for the tray to be 3cm on the back and sides, but I wanted a lower front (2cm), so the kids wouldn't have to hold their hands so high to reach things. 

I took an old drop mat and cut it to size leaving 1cm around the edge to sew (so I cut a rectangle of 32cm by 50cm). I then took pieces of old laminated paper and cut them into 4 pieces; 2 to fit the sides (24cm x 3cm), and 2 to fit the back (21cm x 3cm). The back was made from two pieces, not one, as I wanted to leave a gap in the middle of the back so that the tray could be folded smaller than an a4 page, and easily fit into a backpack. I made sure the laminate pieces were a fraction on the small size so that they wouldn't interfere with any folding lines. I then folded the edge of the drop mat over (1cm) and sewed the laminated paper in place.
 

For the front edge I glued a fine strip of batting along and folded the edge over and sewed it into place. Again I left a gap in the batting in the middle of the front edge for easy folding. This made the tray more comfortable to lean wrists on and yet stiff enough to provide an edge. I am worried however that it also makes it too bulky to fit behind a closed tray.

Plane activity tray, folded in half ready to carry

The corners were the tricky bit. I had originally planned to use velcro, but the velcro I had was such poor quality, and the size of the corners was so small, it just didn't grip well enough. So (thanks to some inspiration from Mr Crafty) I decided to sew a loop of ribbon a little way from the corner, which the folded corner can be neatly tucked under. In the next prototype I think I'd use elastic instead of ribbon to made it even easier. To make the front corner a little easier I prefolded the top corner down and stitched it in place.
 

Front corner, folded

Back corner, folded

Front corner, unfolded

Back corner, unfolded

We then trialled the finished product at the dinner table, as a drawing tray and also as a bead threading tray. It worked well, although it didn't managed to catch strings of beads that were dropped half a meter away from it...

Edit: I made a second one with some improvements. Find it here.