Airplane Essentials For Flying with Babies, Toddlers, and Kids

May 23, 2026

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We all dream of taking our kids to different places and allowing them to experience different parts of the world, but getting there can be such a trial, especially for moms with young kids.

If you're going a plane ride that's more than two hours, your kids are probably going to look to you for entertainment at some point, and for young kids (toddlers especially) there just won't be enough items in the world to keep them busy for that many hours in a row.

That being said, there are a ton of activities (and a lot of budget friendly things) that are great to take on flights to help keep your kids entertained when the excitement of nonstop TV has worn off and they're looking for something new.

Check out my airplane essentials that I pack on every flight to make sure my kids have what they need to stay engaged without constantly needing me.

For Toddlers/Babies:

Let's face it, toddlers (and babies) can only last so long in one spot before they need to be up and moving, so be prepared to do some aisle walking (or ask your husband to handle that when the time comes). But before that, try these toddler activities, snacks, and tools to keep your little one entertained in the airplane:

Bring the carseat on the plane - I didn't know you could do this until just a few months ago, but if you buy a ticket for your baby or toddler (AKA they're not a lap infant), then you can bring their car seat on the plane with you and buckle them in. My neighbor says this is her preferred method for traveling with young kids because it keeps them in their seat and helps them realize that airplanes, like cars, are a time to stay in one spot.
Snacks - These are your bread and butter for literally any outing, but for longer trips you're going to need several different kinds. You want something small, semi-mess free, and something your toddler can eat on their own. Here are some of our favorites:
- Teddy Grahams
- Goldfish
- Chips
- Cereal
- Fruit snacks
- Granola bars
- Dried fruit - My toddler loves dried mangoes!
Drawing Activities - At this age drawing isn't always something they're going to love, but these toddler drawing activities are perfect for them and are mess free for parents.
- Drawing pad (sponsored)- I know you can find cheaper ones, but I've tried some of the cheaper brands and they break long before these BravoKid ones so I recommend just getting a nicer one from the get go. We've had our Bravokid writing tablets for 5+ years and they still work, we just have to replace the battery every couple of years.
- Mess Free Coloring - These "mess free" coloring pages are amazing. The colors will show up on the paper, but if your toddler colors on anything else (themself, seats, walls, clothes, etc) no color comes up. These are such a life saver when your kid loves to color but doesn't know how to only color on paper yet. You can get mess free blank pages for your kid to draw whatever they want, or you can get mess free coloring pages.
- Water Wow coloring books - These are fun little books that pack small and create brilliant pictures with only water. They're also semi-reusable because the pages dry out to white and your toddler can color them again. They do wear out over time, but for a flight or road trip they'll hold up just fine.
- Magnetic Drawing Boards - These are small which is great for throwing in a backpack and toddlers as well as kids love playing with them.
Sticker Activities - Sticker books are huge right now, and there are some for younger kids that aren't quite as structured as sticker by number books. Try out one of these if your toddler is into stickers and might enjoy doing them on the plane:
- Sticker Wow! - These booklets come with a sticker stamper for added fun and instead of having to pull each sticker off of a sticker page, you load them into the sticker stamper and let your toddler go wild with it. Things can get out of hand if they start stickering things that aren't paper (or the booklet) but the good news is these stickers are super easy to remove from surfaces (sometimes they even fall off on their own) so you don't have to sweat it too much if a stray sticker makes its way onto the seat in front of you. They also have Dog, Cat, or Bunny Stampers, a dinosaur stamper, or a unicorn stamper.
- Reusable Sticker Books - Okay, so these ones have a lot more pieces that could potentially get lost, and usually I'm not the kind of person to recommend something with this many pieces, but these sticker books are awesome and my toddler (as well as my older kids) has a great time playing with it. So here I am recommending something I goes against my own personal rules for activity books, but that's how you know I love them!
- Paint By Sticker - These sticker books are great for toddlers because there are tons of stickers and tons of pages they can put them on, but there are no letters or numbers to match them to. Yes, each sticker page goes with a specific page in the book, but really, you can let your toddler put whatever stickers they want on any of the pages and it'll turn out alright no matter what. They're perfect for toddlers or younger kids who don't know letter or numbers yet. I particularly like the Pets one and the Baby Animals one for toddlers as the stickers in some of the other books can be really big and hard for little hands to use. The one thing about these is your toddler will probably need help getting the stickers off the back page, but if that's all they need from you, that's a pretty relaxing flight.
- Make a Face Sticker Sheets - There are several reasons why these are so useful on trips. First off, they are individual sheets so you can get one out at a time or only pack a few instead of lugging around an entire sticker book. Second, (and this is a hack I learned from BusyToddler), you can pull off the outline sticker area so that only the stickers remain on the page and then your toddler will be able to pull the stickers off all by themselves! This blew my mind when I saw it done, but it's such a simple secret that allows your toddler to do stickers by themself without needing your help every three seconds. Third, these are so easy to throw away once your toddler has completed them (and lost interest) so it won't add piles of junk to your house.
Books - Bring along their favorite board book so that you can look at pictures along the way. They may take a bit of convincing to get into it when there are so many other distractions, but once you point out their favorite dog in the book, they'll probably want to look at the other pictures as well.
Headphones - if there will be on-flight entertainment or if you have a tablet, I'd say the airplane is a great time to let your toddler have some screen time, even if they're just looking at family photos or tapping on a blank screen. Ear buds aren't going to work, but headphones are great for toddlers (and half the time they'll be happy just playing with the headphones). Don't stress too much about letting them have screen time, if you're lucky enough to have your toddler entertained for a whole fifteen minutes by screen, then take advantage of that. They most likely won't want to sit and watch an entire movie on the flight, so they won't be getting "too much" screen time.

If you have a younger toddler or an active baby, the LCD drawing pads (Sponsored), magnetic drawing board, and snacks will be your best bet, but here are a few other ideas to help them on the long plane ride:

Sensory Cube - our toddler loved this when she was 9-18 months. It packs small and has something new on each side.
Busy Board - Similar to the sensory cube, this thing packs small and has lots of different things to play with.
Sensory Busy Board Book - I personally never take ours on trips because there are so many different pieces for my toddler to lose, but I know a lot of people love to bring these because there are so many things for their toddler to play with.

For Kids:

Your kids may be the type that will sit and watch TV for H-O-U-R-S without complaint. Mine go in phases where they'll be like this, but usually after 2 movies they're done with TV for a few minutes and want something else to do. Here are some of their favorite things to play with on airplane and car rides to break up the TV time while still keeping them in their seats.

Magnetic Puzzles (Sponsored) - One of my kids has a brain for puzzles. She's been doing them since she was one (the baby puzzles, of course) and now that she's four she loves these puzzle books! The cool thing about them is that they're magnetic so the pieces stay on the board and you aren't as at big a risk of losing them. Yes, we occasionally drop a few but so far we've have this puzzle book for 2 years and we still have every single piece. There are 3 puzzles in here so your kid can either do them one at a time or take all the pieces off and put them all together at the same time for an extra challenge.
Paint By Sticker - My kids love paint by sticker books and as they get older you can get them more detailed ones. My preschooler can do these even though she doesn't know all the numbers and letters yet because she just treats them like a puzzle and figures it out on her own. Yes, she sometimes gets a piece wrong, but we've been able to figure it out in the end (or she doesn't notice and we're blissfully unaware that some pieces are placed wrong). My older kiddo loves these as well and of course she uses the letters/numbers to guide the sticker placement. I particularly love the Animals book and the Under the Sea book because they come with 42 images to create instead of 10-30) and they're often on sale for under $11. Plus they're spiral bound which makes them so much easier to use. If your kids are younger (1st grade or Kindergarten) the Paint By Sticker Kids books are also a great option.
Dot Art - It feels like they come out with a new form of "dot art" every year which means you have so many options to choose from for this activity.
- They have dot art markers (don't forget the coloring book) which I've brought on planes before and they've worked out well for younger kids (but we were very clear with our kids that they could only use one marker at a time so that we could manage the chaos of littles with marker paints a bit easier).
  - Don't forget the coloring book for ages 2-4, or coloring book for ages 3-5
- If your kids love dot art, but you don't want the hassle of markers, but some circle stickers from the office supply section. They work fit great on dot art coloring books. I would definitely choose over markers now because the stickers are much harder for the kids to get off themselves which means they won't be stamping the wall of the airplane while you're distracted for half a second. Plus, if they do happen to get some stickers on the plane, these ones come off easily enough.
- If your kids are older, they have dot art for tweens+ (sponsored) now that is more detailed but just as relaxing and entertaining. You can get yourself one, or check out these dot art books for adults.
Dry Erase Activity Books - These are a hit with preschoolers and up. They're easily packed in a backpack (just don't forget the marker) and because they're erasable your kids can share them or do them over and over again. My kids are really into these right now, so much so that our dry erase markers are getting used up. But hey, it's a good day when your kids are actually entertained by something you've bought for them.
Headphones - Make sure you get ones that have an AUX cable (whether built in or not) so that they can connect to the plane screens. If you need headphones that can do bluetooth or AUX, check out these ones (sponsored).
Snacks - Just because your kids aren't toddlers doesn't mean they won't consume copious amounts of snacks. Anything from the toddler snacks list is also great for kids. You can also try apples, grapes, carrots, clementines, etc.

I hope this article gives you some ideas as to what to pack for your kids to keep them entertained on flights and car rides. If you need more ideas, check out my Travel Activities For Kids Storefront as I'll add ideas to that whenever I come across them.