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.

Busy Roll Tutorial

I made a couple more busy rolls recently, and I'm really quite chuffed with how they turned out. These are an idea I came up with, sort of like a busy book or a quiet book, but only one page that can be rolled up and put in your handbag and then used when you're out for coffee or doing your groceries. You could put any activity you like on them, or have a couple of different rolls that you rotate through to keep your toddler interested. I filled the pockets with finger puppets, but you could put anything in that you think would interest your child; little cars, animals, dolls etc.

** Please note that there are small items on this, if they were to come loose, they could be a choking hazard.

So here's the tutorial:

1. Collect together some fabric scraps. 

I've used: 

a 20cm zip, 

2 larger rectangles of fabric, approx. 24cm x 30cm for the main body, 

2 smaller pieces of fabric approx. 24cm x 10cm for pockets, 

a strip of felt approx 24cm long and an inch wide, 

2 small pieces of felt to use at pocket flaps, maybe 3 x 1.5 inches. 

about 60cm of ribbon, 

3 buttons,

some velcro,

some string,

and some beads.

2. Lay the bits and pieces out and sort them until you're happy with the layout. Sew hems on the top of the pockets, and fold the bottom of the top pocket under and iron a crease into it.

3. Sew the zip to the top of the pocket.

4. Thread the beads onto the string and tie a firm knot in the string, making a loop long enough to go twice across your main fabric.

5. Cut slits on your long strip of felt. They need to be wide enough for your button to fit through, and should be spaced approx. 1 inch apart.

6. Sew a seam down the middle of you bottom pocket, fixing it to your large piece of fabric.

7. Sew a square of velcro/ hook and loop onto one side of the bottom pocket, and a matching square onto one of the felt pocket flaps.

8. Sew the two pocket flaps in place.

9. Sew a button onto the other side of the bottom pocket, and cut a slit through the pocket flap large enough for the button to fit through.

10. Sew a strip of ribbon on, sewing it down every inch or so. 

11. Sew the string firmly to the fabric, such that one half of the string winds its way back and forth under the ribbon, and the other half forms a straight line to the other side of the fabric.

12. Sew the top side of the zip down, and the bottom side of the zip pocket.

13. Sew a button firmly onto a piece of ribbon which is approx 30cm (i.e. longer than your fabric is wide).

14. Sew the ribbon and felt strip in place.

15. Sew a small strip of ribbon to the top of your fabric, with the loop pointing down (I forgot to do this before the next step, hence the shot looking inside the inverted busy roll).

16. Place your backing material over your fabric with all the activities on it, right sides facing in. Pin and sew together. leaving a hand sized gap at the bottom.

16. Turn right sides out, and roll it up to find the right spot to sew a large button on the backing fabric. The top loop will hook over this button to keep the roll closed.

17. Sew the bottom of the fabric together.

18. Finished!

If you make your own, I'd love to hear about it.

Positive Affirmation Book

This year Mr 5 started school, and with that has come a blow to his confidence as he encounters his first real bullying. As a consequence he's been asking me to tell him good things about himself. I thought I could do one better than that and so I bought a cheap little pocket notebook, and sat down and brainstormed and wrote down as many positive traits as I could; everything from riding his bike, to having patience, to things he's told me he likes about himself.

Using a word processor I put each possitive affirmation in it's own little box, and printed them out and pasted them into the book. The title of the book is one we brainstormed together.

The super pleased look Mr 5 gave me when he worked out what I was doing, and when I'd finished it, definitely made it a worthy project to have accomplished.

By pure chance I picked out Josh the Robot from the library this week. It's a beautifully written book about being teased and bullied, written by Peter Rowe. And the robot makes it appealing to boys.

Travel Activity Book

I really wanted to make some wipe-erase activity sheets. I first bought wipe erase pens, but although they wrote well on clear folder pockets and smooth clear plastic, I found they wiped off very easily. This made the drawings (and little hands) very messy. Not to mention that the ink didn't wash out of clothes. Meanwhile they wouldn't wipe off laminated pages at all.

It wasn't until I heard about dry-erase crayons from Crayola and found a $5 packet of them at Target, that this idea really started to take shape.

The dry-erase crayons don't work easily on clear folder pockets (too much drag), but they do work well on laminated paper. Even better, they rub off quite easily with the cloth that comes with them, but don't rub off on your hand.

So then, time to make an activity travel book. I wanted something that would be suitable for planes, restaurants, the back of the car, rainy days, etc. so I made the pages A5 size.

I first started with some scenes that could be filled in with crayons or stickers. Miss 3 loves finishing a scene, wiping it off and then drawing it again. Especially if she has some company to do it with. Her favourite is the scene with the people, but I also included a space scene, underwater scene and a road. I used ripped paper, stickers and crayons to make them.

I then printed out some spot the difference puzzles (Mr 4's favourite puzzle at the moment), and I drew in some activities like a maze, thumbprints to make thumbprint doodles, and make-your-own sums in the left-over spaces. The crayons unfortunately don't show up fantastically on the red paper. The kids love mazes which are like streets with a different picture at each dead-end. And the maze lasts longer because they like visiting each object in turn. They are a little too easy for Mr 4, but that just means he tells me how they are too easy while he's busy doing them.

Next I put in the classic travel games: battle ships and close the square.

I also put in a blank page with a few other suggestions of games like tic-tac-toe or hangman that could be played there. I wrote the alphabet along one side to make hangman easier.

Finally I put in a home made plane scavenger hunt.

Edited to add: I have now made a plane trip scavenger hunt you can download for free from here.

I bound the book together using ring loops. This way I can change the pages to add things like my homemade i-spy pages (if I decide to add them in), new puzzles, new mazes or a page to collect stickers on. I can also take out the plane i-spy, and put in a car bingo etc.

A Homemade I-Spy Book

I have been eyeing off the beautiful home made i-spy books like this one from Delia creates. I wanted to add some of my own home-made i-spy pages to the restaurant/travel dry-erase books I've been making, but when I'd finished the pages I put them in a $1 photo album and really liked it. Perhaps I'll laminate them and put them in the travel book later.

It was such a simple project. Just get a collection of toys, spread them out on a plain background so that you can see everything, and make a photo. I carefully didn't make them too cluttered and busy, because the kids find that too difficult and loose interest (see my post on i-spy bags). I then chose 5 or 6 objects to photograph, this time making sure that there was enough space around each object that I would be able to crop them into a smaller image. I then put them together with a little rhyme of up to eight other things to find.

Mr 4 likes to read the rhymes, and Miss 3 has the pictures she can match. The kids loved helping me do it. Although of course, true to the nature of children, the help made the project much more challenging. After printing I noticed that one of the search-for pictures showed a pram that Miss 3 had taken out of the dolls house to be play with at a crucial moment. The project took several days to make 10 puzzles (there was something about spreading out a nice collection of toys on the floor that meant they needed to be played with for a couple of hours). The last one we did, Mr 4 gathered all the things, spread them out and helped with the rhyme. He loved seeing his own toys, especially his sticker-reward chart, which was filled with all sorts of different stickers.

I-Spy Bags and I-Spy Bottles

I loved the look of these i-spy bags that are everywhere in the Internet. My kids thought the idea was very interesting, although they didn't really want to spend more than about 20 minutes with it (about the same time as it took me to make a second one). I think it kept my husband and me entertained for longer than the kids. This could be because Mr 4 has great trouble finding anything, and Miss 2 was too young. Or perhaps the coloured beads make it too difficult.

The finished objects turned out to be about 10 or 12 cm square. I first made the grey bag bigger (hence the big window) but it was too big for small hands. The big window does make it much easier to find the things inside though. The metal things are particularly hard to find, as they tend to sink down to the bottom of the beads.

I used the coloured beads because I had them in house, and also because they weren't a food product, and so wouldn't cause issues going through airport quarantine.

I also bought small bottles and some letter beads and made and an alphabet i-spy bottle. Again, it was too hard for my kids, and so didn't hold their attention for too long; they got far more entertainment out of sorting the letter beads onto chenille sticks and pouring the beads into the bottle. The grown ups played a little longer with it, and then I passed it on to a 4 y/o friend who loves looking for i-spy things and was going on an international holiday.

A Busy Roll

I had been eyeing off some beautiful busy books, but I wanted to try something that I could make in one morning, and was more easy to post to a friend or fit in a handbag.

This was the result. A busy roll. There are two pockets at the bottom, one velcro shut, one snap shut. A lacing activity with felt and a ribbon and button, a zip (which leads to no-where, much to the kids disappointment.) and some pony beads on a string maze.

The loops were a bit small on the string maze to start with, but the kids thought it looked appealing, and especially loved the pockets and the lacing.