Quiet, light toys for a 12 month old....

[tory79]

We are off to Florida in 2 months, ds will be 12.5 months then. I am panicing about entertaining him on an 8 hour flight!

Does anyone have any suggestions on what to take? They will obviously have to go in handluggage and I wish to irritate our fellow flyers as little as possible

Thank you

I think he is a bit young to watch movies or tv etc, when the tv is on he will watch it for just a few minutes before doing something else, I just don't think the attention span is there yet unfortunately!

A kazoo??? Nightmare!

Stacking cups are very light and because they nest don't take up much space. Couldn't guarantee they might not get lost though as they could fall under chairs etc (although I guess that goes for anything that isn't attach-able).

Wishing you lots of luck. I wouldn't fancy it with my DS, he loves playing with his environment (I could totally see him wanting to put the tray table up/down 20937846746 times or the arm rests) and although he plays with his toys beautifully at home they just don't seem to grab his attention much when out and about!

My DS2 is 16 months & I always have with me a toy mobile phone & a 'That's not my...' board book, which he loves. These kept him occupied yesterday for 45 minutes (one half of an Olympics football match at Wembley!) He may also be able to use chunky crayons by that point for some scribbling?

Good luck!

Our DS is nearly two and we have always travelled a lot by train to see family. I don't have much experience of long haul flights but our travel staples since he was about one have been things like a few small finger puppets, a couple of small cars (the kind that are really for older children but are fine supervised), a pad of paper and crayons/stickers, a small stacking doll or a couple of little tins with shells or mini pom poms for taking in and out, a bit of playdough, maybe with some lollipop sticks to stick in it, a couple of little farm animals and some books (although that's started being more effective recently). Having new things that they haven't seen before can help. We've also found playing hand games really useful for occupying him - basic things like hiding something in a closed hand or playing 'here's the church, here's the steeple etc'. Lots of friends have found ipads helpful on longer flights but like you, our DS wouldn't have been terribly interested in this at 1.

have you seen the Scanimation books? we had Waddle! and Gallop! both fascinating for that 12-18m stage, the pictures move when you turn the pages (no lights or annoying noises though thankfully! and they're not huge books so good for travel), mine loved them and could turn the pages for quite a while at a time, and come back to them again and again. We got ours on amazon. probably worth a look at those for you. also, colouring book/pad and chunky crayons are always the saviour in this house or travelling with our 2.8yo, even back when he was 12m. :)

Wow thanks for the great ideas!

Can I ask a really dumb question, what kind of crayons would you give to a 12 month old? ds is very much still a mouther!

Thanks

I'd use the chunky crayons rather than the slim ones, and obviously don't take your eyes off them so that you can stop any munching on them! mine was a nibbler, he soon stopped when I pushed the crayons away from his mouth every time he tried to chew them, got the hint and scribbled with them after a bit :)

Crayola do nice chunky ones. Try toys from the pound shop. Stickers go down a treat. You could wrap up the toys. DC gets to unwrap each one - mine were more interested in the unwrapping!

Or maybe try 'hiding' some of his favourite toys and bringing them out again on the flight?

also does yours like building blocks of any kind? you could get some of the bigger ones (so that little pieces don't go all over the floor) and do a couple of simple towers on your seat maybe. I wouldnt take anything to complex or with pieces that could be lost or tripped over though! an old fashioned kaelidoscope might be fun? we used to have to do a 7-8hour train journey once a month with ours between 4-24m, nightmare, another saviour was an etch-a-sketch! honestly, mine loves to draw, and got the hang of 'wiping' board clean and doodling again and again, he used it for hours on those journeys. :)

oh yeah, sticker books are good too!