A Toddler Airplane Survival Kit

[Update 8/7/2015: Check out my latest Kid Surival Kit here]

Between our last few trips and useful links the web, I was inspired to redouble my efforts to make plane travel as painless as possible for us and our 17 month old.

See, he's at a tricky age - not so young that he's just satisfied with snoozing and sitting in one place, but not old enough to be bribed with a Disney DVD. He wants to move and explore. Always. And the fact that we have 6 cubic feet to ourselves isn't something he quite understands yet.

So, I took at a shot at developing an Airplane Survival Kit for him. It basically focused on three areas: brain activities (reading, drawing), tactile activities (opening containers, playing with various textures) and controlled destruction (un-spooling dental floss, sticking tape everywhere, etc.). I figured the last category would be especially important to provide - what toddler can't resist doing something they aren't supposed to?

Here's what was in the kit:

• Travel Magna Doodle
• 3 books rented from the library that he had never seen before. Two had photos, 1 had hand drawings. All contained some objects he knows the words for.
• ID holder retractor thingy
• Heavy duty tin foil
• Couple of balloons
• New container of dental floss
• Unbreakable comb
• Handful of colored pipe cleaners
• Toothbrush that packs within itself
• Handful of glow sticks
• Various colored toothbrush containers
• Roll of masking tape
• Squigglet
• Velcro cable tie
• A few pairs of medical gloves (not shown)

As you can see, it all packed down quite snugly. There was actually more room to add stuff, if I felt like it.

How did it perform?

This last weekend, I had a chance to field test the kit on flights to and from Boston. The flights were a little under an hour. I've got to say, many items in the kit performed well.

The Magna Doodle, for example, was a definite winner. Last time we traveled, I brought along crayon and paper for him to use. Even with supervision, he managed to tag the wall, both sides of the tray table and his seat, before I could wrestle the crayon away from him. The Magna Doodle let him do some serious drawing without the potential mess. That, and the erase feature was just as fascinating to him as the ability to draw.

Other items like the dental floss were used in ways I hadn't expected. I would have imagined that he would have gotten much joy from unspooling the 20+yards of material. But really, we just ended up getting into a fascinating game of open-and-close. I'd flip open the cap, he'd close it. Repeat. Hey, it kept him in one place and occupied, which more than worked for me. In general, he liked playing with the containers.

The medical gloves inflated perfectly into characters he could interact with. And the texture of the Squigglet was as interesting to him as I thought it would be. He tugged away on that sucker, but nothing broke.

One trick that did work well, was that instead of asking for a drink, I asked for a cup and a couple ice cubes. Our little one entertained himself by playing with the cubes. Again, it was a bit of destruction, but didn't do any harm.

Overall, the kit worked well, and it was nice to have a variety of items to bounce between.

Have any suggestions for what I should add to it?