Kid Plane Activities On Singapore Trip

My Traveling Troop's flight to Singapore from San Francisco took more than 20 hours. To pass the time, my husband and I took turns chasing our three-year-old daughter around the airplane. When Bella was stuck in her seat, she kept busy with fun activities I packed for the trip:

1. Wind-up toys. I bought a couple at a toy store in Monterey, Calif., for my daughter Bella to play with on the airplane. She enjoyed racing the butterfly and caterpillar (the butterfly often won). Bella also giggled as she tried to see how long she could keep them from falling off the tray table.

2. Sticker activities. I crafted sticker activities on index cards, which are easy for me to carry and for my daughter to play with on the airplanes' small tray tables. The activity below, for example, required my daughter to place the correct quantity of stickers next to the numbers written on the cards.

3. Matching shapes. I found the thin-wooden shapes at craft-supply store Michaels. I traced the shapes onto index cards so Bella could match the wooden shapes to the ones etched on the cards.

4. Matching colors. Inspired by blogs such as Counting Coconuts and Chasing Cheerios, I visited Home Depot and picked up a stack of free paint sample cards (two of each color) for Bella to sift through and find the matching colors.

5. Hasbro Play-Doh Party Pakand mini cutters. Bella loves pounding, rolling and making things with play-doh, so I pack some for each trip we go on.

6 & 7. Rocks and shells. Armed with a mini-magnifying glass, my daughter first checked out her collection of rocks from the Tellus Science Museum in Georgia. Then, she took a closer look at shells we collected during our time in Monterey.

8. Fun with travel bottles. I gave my daughter a set of travel bottles to play with. She practiced taking the caps off the bottles and screwing them back on. When she was ready for more of a challenge, I handed her craft pom poms to stuff into the bottles. She sorted the pom poms by color. I wish I packed tweezers with this activity too so that she could take the pom poms out of the bottles when she was done. That alone would have added a good five minutes to the activity and given her an opportunity to do it again if she wanted to. (By the way, I got the idea for the pom pom activity at the PreKinders website).

9. Bottle caps. I collected plastic caps from soda bottles and brought them on the plane. Bella grouped them into different shapes and even tried to make a high tower out of them. She also hid pennies and littles shells from her collection under the caps and challenged me to find them.

10. Alphabet flash cards. I picked up a pack of alphabet flash cards for my daughter at a toy store in Monterey. I quizzed her on the letters, then she sifted through the cards and tried to match the capital letters with the lower case letters. Bella also liked looking at all the pictures on the front of each card.

What activities did you pack for your kids on your most recent trip? Where do you find inspiration for the travel activities?

Cheers,
Kristina