Flying with young kids is one of those things that can bring a parent a lot of anxiety. We’re suppose to keep our kids quiet, seated, and in a good mood for however long the airplane ride is That’s just not realistic, so I want to put your mind at ease from the start—pray that fellow passengers are compassionate, that the flight attendants be gracious, that your children will enjoy their time, etc. Kids are kids even on airplanes!!! If they cry, scream, misbehave, you’re not a bad mom that needs to “control” her child. That’s not a reflection on you, it’s a child behaving like a child. We’ll try our best to supply them with fun activities & toys to preoccupy them, but sometimes our children don’t know how to act. Especially because flying might be new, scary, hurting their ears, etc. Let’s go into this with a lot of grace for both ourselves and our kids!

With all that being said—let’s get into the fun part! This is everything I brought with me onto the airplane in a diaper bag. Each child is allowed a diaper bag, so I had one bag with diapers, clothing, etc. and one bag with snacks and toys. It seems like a lot when you see everything laid out on the ground, but these were mostly thin and my diaper bag tote fit everything. This was the bag I used for toys & snacks, the other bag I used was the Fawn Bag for diapers (milena20 saves you 20% off your purchase!)

The zipper bags I used were from Amazon (shop linked here). The idea behind the individual bags was to not lose anything and also to have everything easily grouped. I didn’t want to spend a ton of money buying new things; I mainly wanted to use what I already had so I want to encourage you to do the same! Just use this blog as inspiration! My thought process included these considerations:

+ minimal pieces (nothing too small that can get lost)

+ Toys/activities I know my kids enjoy

+Nothing messy/sticky

+All “task oriented” style toys

+Friendly for both age groups

This first row consisted of activities more suited for Alethea (my 2 year old). Starting from the top, I had 2 mess-free drawing activities.

1. Magic Velvet & Water Wow. Both come with paper + pen + storage for pens which is huge! The Water Wow does require water, so I filled that up ahead of time so I didn’t have to worry about filling a small pen with water while wrangling my kids on the airplane lol. But I’m sure a flight attendant would be glad to bring some water to you as well.

2. Alethea loves color-coding and organizing, so I already had these felt circles + colorful peg people and I brought this as a matching game (Ari can also just play with these).

3. I found this paper cover at Target’s dollar area a couple weeks ago, so I ripped out one of Alethea’s work pages + added an expo marker for her to practice making lines with and THIS WAS HER FAVORITE. 10/10 recommend this activity.

Next row was geared more towards Ari but again, both kids can play with all of these toys!

1. I bunched 2 items into this bag—painter’s tape & these suction toys! The idea behind the painter’s tape was that I can rip a 3-4 inch piece and put it anywhere for the kids to practice peeling it off and develop their fine motor skills. The suction toy can suction to any surface or to one another, so the kids can build towers, put them all over the trays, etc.

2. These are a wooden version of magnetic titles that everyone loves (even Jordan lol)!

3. Last activity is a drawing board (similar to an etch a sketch) which is a classic toy—I don’t have the exact link to ours because it’s from a local shop but here’s a similar one!

This last section is probably the most exciting one

1. You just can never go wrong with play-doh and farm animals. I know I mentioned earlier that I wanted mess-free things, but honestly play-doh isn’t that messy and clean up is easy!

2. Next bag I put 2 activities together—small blocks and an activity that I made up! Both my kids love puzzles that involve fitting a small object into a container, so I used one of Alethea’s paint cups and grabbed some paper clips for them to practice picking up the paper clips and dropping them into the cup! Ari LOVED this one.

3. This is a magnetic and chalk board that we already had. I added magnetic farm animals and magnetic dinosaurs and drew a line down the middle for Alethea to categorize the two!

4. And the last but not least item was a reusable sticker book that both Alethea and Ari loved!

Those are all my activities, the kids loved and used all of them both on the airplane, in the hotel, and at restaurants while we waited to be seated. The takeaway from all of this is that these activities aren’t limited to airplanes—they work great on road trips too ☺️ I hope this helps y’all out!! Safe travels