When packing for an upcoming flight with a baby, many things come into play. To prepare, you’ll include everything needed, within reason, to keep your baby fed, dry, comfortable, and well-rested. After all that, there isn’t much room for anything else, but there is still one more necessity! You need to keep your baby entertained. How do you do that? With a cleverly packed toy bag.
3 Tips for Baby’s Carry-on Toy Bag:
1. Choose toys that are easy to pack. Toys that are small, thin, and/or breakdown easily are best.
2. Choose toys that have multiple uses. You don’t want the toy to be a one-trick pony. Be creative and think of all the things you could do with that toy before it gets the privilege of traveling with you and your baby.
3. Try to stay away from toys that are too noisy. You want your fellow passengers to like you. True, they’ll like you worse if you have a fussy baby, but annoying squeaks and repetitive jingles, aren’t going to get you any bonus points either.
6 Bergen-Approved Items
1. An entertaining book. Bergen’s choice is The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle (board book edition). You can read the book. You can look at the pictures. You can have fun counting all the the fruits and vegetables the caterpillar consumes. You can play with the fun flaps as the items grow in number. Other entertaining books include “lift-the-flap” books, and “Indestructibles“.
2. Nesting cups. Bergen loves his “Munchkin Bath Cups”. They nest inside each other, can be stacked on top of each other to make a tower, and you can snap them together to make a caterpillar! And, since they all fit so nicely together, they don’t take up a lot of space.
3. A Mirror. Oh the fun you can have with a mirror! This particular mirror came from Bergen’s play mat, but we’ve repurposed it to be included in the travel toy bag. Make funny faces, play around with light, have baby admire himself…and best of all? It’s super-thin, making it easy to stuff anywhere.
4. Rings. Rings are a toy in themselves, but they can also be hooked on to other items, made into necklaces, bracelets, leashes for lovies, and on and on.
5. The Whoozit. With so many features, the “whoozit”, or similar baby toy, is bound to keep baby engaged (for at least minute or so). In fact, on Bergen’s first flight to Atlanta, he laughed for the first time thanks to his whoozit!
6. Flash Cards. Bergen likes the “Wee Gallery Art Cards for Baby“. The black and white images are easy for him to see, and each card is two-sided giving him 2 perspectives of each masterpiece. You can talk about each animal featured, make up stories, practice animal sounds, and then when you are all finished, baby can have at it, and “eat” them!
What’s in your Carry-On Toy Bag? Please share!
This post is part of Travel Tips Tuesday on WalkingOn Travels and Suitcases and Sippy Cups. For tons more travel tips, check out their sites!
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Great tips! I’m having to pull out all of my old tricks now that I have another little guy. You’ve added a few more to my bag of infant fun for sure.
Thanks, Keryn! I bet you have quite a few tricks up your sleeve! 😉
Awesome tips! I always pack toys but it seems that letting my 9 month old chew on a cup from inflight service seems to always do the trick!
Those cups come in handy don’t they?! If it’s a long flight you can get quite a collection going. That reminds me that on a recent flight I started putting Bergen’s puffs inside the cup so he had to work for them a little bit 🙂 Thanks for stopping by the blog!
Reblogged this on AirportsMadeSimple.
We are going to Disneyland this summer and are flying with 3 children 6, 3, and 1 crazy I know. I have only flown once with the eldest child and he did amazing we made sure we had a crinkly book, his favorite toy, teething toy and he did great but he mostly played jumping seats (jumping from family members to family members.) This time around I have done so much research on what to do to keep my 3 kids entertained. For the two older kids they each get a new book bag filled with crayons, coloring book, dry erase board, dry erase markers, their nabi’s with new headphones a new DVD to play in their portable DVD player a new kid friendly camera and an DIY activity book. I have not decided on if I want to wrap each item or not (kind of messy) but if I do wrap each item they will get to open one thing every half hour or hour depending on how well something keeps them entertained. I am hoping all this keeps them entertained. I also have new stuff for the plane ride home so that they are not bored. The youngest I am packing a mirror, a baby book, her favorite baby doll, a play cell phone, and tons of snacks. Now I know this might sound expensive but I planned our family vacation a year ahead of time and I have been buying their stuff here and there so that I didn’t have this huge amount at once. I bought 1.00 coloring books, I bought crayons when they were on sell, and the $5.00 movies at Wal-Mart. The things that cost the most were the cameras $30.00 a piece and the head phones which could be inexpensive but I went for the character type ones.
Wow, Megan! I’m impressed. You are more than prepared for this journey! I like all your ideas and it’s great that each older kid will get their own backpack that they can carry and take ownership of. I’d maybe wrap a few things (my 2.5 year old loves that and I just use newspaper) like the cameras b/c you are right, with 2 kids plus a baby that can get messy for a plane ride.
Also love how you spaced out the expenses. I’m all for planning ahead! They must be so excited. Have an amazing vacation!