Kinzah’s travel “busy bag”

We did it! We took our first international flight with Kinzah and let me tell you, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. So my first piece of advice for anyone traveling (abroad or not) with a baby… don’t over think it! Just hope for the best, go with the flow, and pack lots of snacks and your toddlers’ favorite things to do!

Here is what I packed in Kinzah’s bag to try to keep her preoccupied (she is 20 months). Some things worked, others she didn’t care for. Everything I packed were new things she hadn’t seen before (except for her crayons, and favorite books) so that they would grab her attention.

On the way back, I’m going to pack the things she didn’t care for much in our luggage.  I tend to always overthink and over pack, so her bag was pretty heavy and she didn’t really use everything in it.

Activities

• A new coloring book (Always a favorite!) – $1 from the 5 and Below store
• Melissa & Doug On the Go Magicolor Mess-Free Coloring pad (We both enjoyed this!) – $4 from Marshalls
• Glow Sticks (Great for evening flights.) – $1 from the dollar section at Target
• Ice cream cone shaped flash light necklace (Also great for night travel.) – $1 from dollar section at Target
• Mini dry erase board (Got bored of this quick.) – $1 from dollar section at Target
• Lacing Shapes activity (This is great for building fine motor skills. Kinzah tried doing it but gave up quick, it was a bit advanced for her age.) – $1 from dollar section at Target
• Plastic beads with string to make a necklace (Also great for fine motor skills but advanced for Kiki.) – Free from her aunt!
• 2 small tubs of play dough (Always a classic!) – less than $1 from Target
• Disney sticker book (Kiki LOVES stickers) – Free from Grandma!
• Jelly stickers to stick on the plane window (Kinzah LOVED these!) – $1 from ACMoore
• Alphabet/Numbers flash cards – $1 from Ollies
• 4 of her favorite cardboard books
• iPad with 3 games (ABC genius, Elmo ABC, Kids Doodle) and 1 movie (Leap!) downloaded from Netflix – free from the app store & Netflix

The iPad was a “last resort” option since Kinzah doesn’t usually sit on the iPad or our phones. She wasn’t really interested in the games and watched a little bit of the movie… all she wanted was Moana. Kareem and I are thinking to invest in purchasing Moana for her on the iPad to use in those “last resort, don’t lose it” situations while traveling.

Snacks

We packed the snacks in a ziplock bag and put them in Kareem’s backpack, we had no room in Kinzah’s!

• Water bottle
• small Sesame Street juice boxes – Walmart
• Apple sauce pouches – Costco
• Indivudally packed Goldfish packets – Costco
• Grapes
• Cheese sticks

I hope this helped give you some “busy bag” inspiration for your little ones. I’d love to hear your recommendations on other things to pack, so be sure to leave me a comment below or on my IG picture related to this post.

Safe travels!