{Tips} Flying with Infants and Toddlers – Part II (Travel Toys)

We love these books. They’re thin, they’re light and they’re pretty much as their brand says… indestructible! Our favorite is Baby Babble. We’d rotate between a few of these books on flights with Liam.

We not only bring these on our travels, we use this at home all the time too! You just add water to the pen and start doodling on these thin folders (lightweight and thin is always good for travel). We love using these at home because we don’t have to worry about getting crayon or colored pen marks all over our home. It’s just water!

This is one of our newest findings! We have yet to bring it with us on a trip but will be very soon (we’ve been testing and using it at home). Similar to the Aquadoodle, this is an LCD writing tablet. The marks disappears at the touch of a button. Again, no worries about getting ink all over the place!

The one we show here is the 10.5” tablet. There is also another that is an 8.5” but we recommend this larger sized one because of one critical feature — the batteries are replaceable on this one. The 8.5” tablet does not have a replaceable battery.

Very versatile! You can teach your child the concept of colors (red/black), shapes (diamond, heart…), numbers and even letters! Liam loves identifying all the heart shapes in the cards. We’d take out one card at a time and ask him if he sees a heart. He’d squeal and clap when he does see one. There are so many more ‘activities‘ that you can come up with using these cards, I am sure!

I must warn you though that you are bound to lose some of these cards in between the gaps in the seats or under the chairs etc… So it might be a good idea to stock up on a few of these.

Liam loves straws. So it was a no brainer for us to bring on a few colorful straws we can entertain him with. We’d bend it into different shapes and tell him stories. He’d chew the ends of the straws, twist the straws and sometimes even pretend they’re sticks with which he’d play his imaginary air drums!  

On our flight home to Seattle from Taiwan recently, the air stewardess handed Liam a sheet of stickers. To our surprise (and delight), he spent the next hour playing with the stickers! We didn’t bring sticker books with us before but now that we know he can handle them (doesn’t put them into his mouth), we’ll definitely be bringing a sheet of two of stickers on our next trip! 

Another skill your child may be working on is learning to stack. These nesting cups are great for them to practice that skill and is also another great toy for entertaining them onboard a flight.

Alternatively, you could do what we did — we didn’t bring our own nesting cups. Instead, we’d wash & dry the cups we’re served water with on a flight and hand them over to Liam to play with! That worked perfectly well too!

We also tend to bring a board book or two from home that we know he likes. We love being able to read about planes with him while pointing to the planes parked on the tarmac or the ones taking off and landing while we’re in the boarding area. We’d also point to the images of people sitting in planes in the book and say his name when we read the book on the plane, hoping he’d understand that we’re trying to tell him he’s sitting in an airplane!

This is another one of our  (Liam included) favorite board books.

Not just because it’s a great book to read with your child but especially because you can sign (as in sign language) while reading the book to your child! I learnt how to sign the entire book (simple to learn) and believe me, when you’re reading and doing all the gestures and facial expressions, you will have your child’s attention!

He has also picked up on the signs, so Liam knows how to sign bear, blue, bird, frog, fish etc… It’s a lot of fun for both parents and child!  There are many Youtube videos you can learn the signs from if you want to. This is just one Youtube example here.

Last but not least, our trusty old link toy has always accompanied Liam on every flight he’s been on.

Its another versatile toy that grows with your child. When he was an infant, he’d chew on this throughout the flight, then as he gained control of his fingers, he loved to hold and shake the linked rings and now that he’s a toddler, he loves to link and unlink the rings, identify the colors of the rings and shake the links like it’s a rattle etc…