These are the toys that kept my 2-year-old occupied during a 3.5h direct flight. I used screens as a last resort (like when we were in the plane for an hour due to maintenance issues 🙃). She did not nap at all during the flight 🥹. Hope it’s helpful to someone out there!
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Small vehicles
I didn’t take all of these with us, just her favorite: excavator, fire truck, and garbage truck. The rest will be future presents. This pack in particular had a variety, which were hard to find because otherwise vehicles are packaged in categories (construction, cars, trucks). These were small enough to carry with me at all times and what I like about the excavator is that the parts swivel around. The doors on the bus do not open and shut though.
Ride-On Luggage
I spent hours looking for the most practical piece of luggage for a toddler and this one takes the cake. We didn’t bring the stroller with us so how will we take her along with us when she doesn’t want to walk? I was considering either just have her sit on our regular luggage or purchasing a cart for the car seat that we would be taking with us. But ended up stumbling across the world of toddler luggage. I was enticed by the high-end luggage-that-converts-into-strollers but they were too expensive for something we would only need temporarily. There are many ride on luggage that is similar to this one, but this one in particular has:
- a nice curved shape for the seat
- small footrests
- wheels that don’t protrude too far out and don’t have to be taken off to be stowed
- small enough to fit in the overhead bin of budget airplanes
- easy to maneuver
- easy for toddlers to wheel around themselves
It’s a bit pricey but for us, it was totally worth it compared to the other luggage that’s out there and for our travel needs.
Play-doh
I brought 1 container with us, with a plastic fork and knife and she loved practicing how to cut. We’d roll them up into balls or logs and she would cut them into pieces, then rinse and repeat.
View Master Classic
I remember these when I was a kid and I don’t know why I enjoyed them so much but I did. My toddler thought they were “binoculars” and loved them as well! Her favorite reel was the dinosaurs. My only gripe with these is that they’re metallic instead of matte so you’ll get fingerprints all over them, and some of the images are of genuinely scary-looking animals. Minutes of fun!
Mini Magnetic Tiles
My toddler loves singing Old MacDonald so I thought these would be a hit but what I didn’t account for was that because of their miniature size, they were a bit more fussy to play around with than the full size Magnatiles. Still, she had fun with them and I think we only lost 1 or 2 pieces 🙃.
Kids Travel Tray
I knew that this would be too big for the budget airline tray tables but I’m still glad I brought it with us because it stored her Play-doh and a few other toys. In the plane, I just held it in my lap for her to play on or put it on her seat since she didn’t want to sit in her seat anyway. It was too big to fit in our backpacks though, so this might count as an extra personal item.
Stickers and sticker books
I bought her both the vehicles sticker book set and the animal sticker book but she wasn’t as into these reusable stickers as I’d thought she’d be, and maybe that’s because we already have some at home that she’s gotten used to. She wasn’t interested in sticking them onto the sides of the plane and the window, like I’ve seen the kids on Instagram do 😅 The part that she was more enamored with was the clear protective sheet that the stickers came stuck on — she loved flipping through them for some reason, I have no idea why. But it kept her occupied for a few minutes so that’s a win in my (sticker) book!
She fared a little bit better with a regular sticker book but she wanted to take the stickers back off after she stuck them, even though they weren’t reusable so she got a bit frustrated with them. They did peel back off though, so she spent some time taking off all the stickers she had put on the page to begin with.
Leak Proof Travel Bottles
These aren’t toys but they were very handy to have. I used them to fill up with baby shampoo, butt paste, lotion, and Aquaphor. Since the jars were small enough, I carried them with me throughout the trip. My toddler actually spent quite a bit of time fascincated with the mini-jars and I let her play with putting lotion on our arms. So even though it isn’t meant to be a toy, they worked great to keep her occupied (and my hands moisturized)!
Honorable mention: portable piano
I bought this travel piano thinking I could take it with us but it was way too big. However, it took me a long time to find a small piano that had black and white keys in the right place so I have to mention it here to save you time from researching realistic toy pianos. Who knew that true-to-life pianos for toldders were so hard to find? I know it’s a bit excessive but I’ll save this as a Christmas gift. I tested it out and it worked great. Some of the reviews say it doesn’t have volume control but if you read the instructions, it does indeed have volume control. It may not be intuitive to control, but maybe that’s by design so children don’t accidentally turn it up to max volume.
Hope these items help you survive on your travel journey, and let me know if they do!
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