Friday, August 7, 2015

17 Airplane & Hotel Busy Bags

We moved to Santiago, Chile! 

i.e. travelled a thousand miles all the way from India, 3 flights and over 30 hours! Which also meant barring furniture that we stored, and some useful stuff that we could take with us, we gave away almost everything we owned! including the few toys & art material! (I did carry 25 kilos of children’s books though!!) 

And I finally succumbed to busy bags! They’re basically ‘activity kits' stored in small zipped baggies (or boxes!) that can be pulled out of your handbag (or shelves!) and given to your kid to play with. They are light weighted, and small and the contents can be spread over teeny tiny tray tables. I made 17 of them! But eventually used only a few in the plane (as we slept a lot, and he watched Ice Age while I caught up with Hunger Games's Mocking Jay… which was all about rescuing the most boring character in the history of cinema, peeta). But these bags were useful in the first week in Santiago too! 

The only caveat for using these in airplanes is that small pieces tend to fall off the trays! *Not* fun trying to wriggle your way to retrieve a puzzle piece under someone’s chair! But it is def better than your child screaming with boredom! 
The Practical Mom: 17 Airplane & Hotel Busy Bags


The only two things I purchased were these cool transparent pouch sized zipper bags (9"X6") & binder rings. 

The Practical Mom: Airplane Busy Bags


Roll a Dice for Spanish Translation

He speaks English and Hindi. And 6 words of Español. So roll the dice and translate Inglés to Español! 


The Practical Mom: Airplane Busy Bags

I Spy ebook by Practical Mom: educational printable to keep kids busy


Pattern Cards + Colored Beads + Pipe Cleaners

String beads on craft pipe cleaners according to patterns on the cards.

The Practical Mom: Airplane Busy Bags


Pattern Cards + Lego Bricks

Make towers according to patterns on the cards.

The Practical Mom: Airplane Busy Bags


Playdoh + Colored Match Sticks + Pattern Cards (or not!)

Colored Match sticks can be arranged as per pattern with our without playdoh


The Practical Mom: Airplane Busy Bags

The Practical Mom: Airplane Busy Bags


Tactile Count & Clip

There are some wonderful count and clip printables available online, all you need are some clothes pegs handy. But I wanted him to count something tactile & over 20, so I glued coloured matchsticks, sequins, pom poms on colourful origami sheets and scribbled 5 possible answers on the right. He has to count em, and peg the correct answer. 

The Practical Mom: Airplane Busy Bags


Counting Beads + Wooden Numbers

Selected beads are be lined up from the bunch of 25 of them for counting and the the weightless wooden numericals to be used to place as the correct answer. 

The Practical Mom: Airplane Busy Bags


Felt + Paper Clips


Clip according to color. Figured this would be a fun bag since it was hilarious watching him try to solve this intricate puzzle the first time around!

The Practical Mom: Airplane Busy Bags


Straws + Pipe Cleaners

Pushing pipe cleaners into straws all the way out of the other end is no child’s play!

The Practical Mom: Airplane Busy Bags


Goldilocks + Blocks + Prepositions Card

Once I got him a Kinder Joy meant for girls, as the one meant for boys wasn’t available! (Gasp!!) But we kept the toy that came with the chocolate, i.e, this doll anyways, by calling her Goldilocks (I guess that's less girly than Rapunzel…whatever!) Using Goldilocks and two building blocks, he needs to enact the prepositions according to the card. “Between” means he puts Goldilocks between two blocks, “far” means he places her far from the block and so on. This is a derivation from Totschooling’s gross motor skills prepositions card, wherein he himself climbed up the table or ran around it to enact the prepositions! 

The Practical Mom: Airplane Busy Bags


I Spy Bottles

Carrying a tiny bit of our sensory bin with us in tiny bottles! One bottle has blue rice and alphabets that he needs to look for alphabetically and the other has purple beans mixed with misc items such as spatula, hammer, sea horse, and he needs to find every item on the list.

The Practical Mom: Airplane Busy Bags

The Practical Mom: Airplane Busy Bags

Pattern Cards + Velcro Craft Sticks

The sticks can be stuck together to form shapes….or a really long snake

The Practical Mom: Airplane Busy Bags



Highlighter + Paper; Color Pencils + Paper; Crayons + Paper


An essential kit for the artist in him! These are busy boxes, not bags, made after we both painted some old puzzle boxes with acrylic paint.

The Practical Mom: Airplane Busy Bags


Stickers drawing prompts + Paper + Crayons

I'd posted earlier about using stickers as drawing prompts, so I took plenty of them! Vehicles, clothes, sports related, many interesting options! 

The Practical Mom: Airplane Busy Bags

The Practical Mom: Airplane Busy Bags


Punch + Paper + Cool Pens

This never gets old! Cannot take scissors in an airplane but can prob whisk in a punch or two! Punch and collect in an envelope.

The Practical Mom: Airplane Busy Bags


Jigsaw Puzzles

He is obsessed with puzzles, So one fine day I went ahead and purchased a whole heap! a few 24-30 piece ones (that he currently does) and even a few 60 piece ones that he will prob do a year from now! Frank puzzles are damn cheap, some $3 for a set of 3 so why not?! And noooo…I didn’t carry the boxes, in fact the boxes are just for show. The puzzle pieces from *all* these 6 boxes for instance fit into *one* single box. I tied a rubber band around each puzzle piece set to avoid mixing with other pieces.

The Practical Mom: Airplane Busy Bags



(I love this little Disney Cars Baggie that can be zipped shut and put away! That’s how they should package puzzles! Whats with the damn boxes!) 

The boxes though did however come in handy to make a fort/ parking lot/ tunnel/ house…. 

Wipe Clean Activity Books


The *only* activity book that has worked for him is Peppa Pig’s Wipe Clean one. So thats what I’m taking. All other colouring books, pattern books, doodle books were given away cuz he just wasn’t interested! 

The Practical Mom: Airplane Busy Bags


Books

I saw these terribly cute little read-aloud books published by Euro Kids, they’re tiny! and light weight! perfect for travels! 


The Practical Mom: Airplane Busy Bags




The Practical Mom: 17 Airplane & Hotel Busy Bags

17 Airplane & Hotel Busy Bags 

I Spy ebook by Practical Mom: educational printable to keep kids busy






Until later! Stay in touch!



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22 comments:

  1. These are some great ideas! Thanks!

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  2. These ideas are right up our alley! Pinned to explore and make in the future!

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  3. Thanks for sharing so many great ideas! I work with infants and toddlers, so many of these are a bit too old for them or use pieces too small, but I think the sensory bottles will be making an appearance during our next session!

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    1. You'll need to tape the caps shut for little ones! The first thing they'll wanna do is open them! Thanks Miss Steph :)

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  4. I'm dropping by from the Modest Mom link party. This is such a fabulous idea. I think I need to make several for my grandchildren!!

    I have a link party that I am trying to grow. I invite you to share this idea -- and a couple of others -- at my Grandma Ideas Sharing Time link party at http://grandmaideas.com. I think my readers would love this idea as much as I do.

    The party goes from Wednesday through Friday night at midnight. I hope to see you there.

    All the best,
    Nina

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  5. What fabulous ideas! I wish I had had this post when my kids were younger. My daughter would have loved the ideas~

    Came over on Think Tank, and I'm glad to find your site.

    Hope you have a blessed day~
    Melanei

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  6. I need to work on some busy bags for my toddler. She is still a little young for most of these just now but I will have to remember them!

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  7. Love all the ideas for preschoolers. Pinned & shared. Thanks for joining the Inspiration Spotlight Party. Hope to see you again soon!

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  8. I love these! I have a two-year-old and your busy bags will definitely come in handy here. :) Thanks for linking up with the Laugh and Learn Linkup! I'll be featuring your post next week.

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  9. These are some awesome Busy Bags to have on hand. Looking forward to putting a few of these together.

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  10. Hello! Found your blog through Jill's link party... I have a 1 year and 7 months old boy, and we will have to travel in few months. I really hope thees ideas for keeping a child busy will work, thanks for sharing!

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