52 Fun Things to Do on the Plane
The revised and updated edition of this best-selling travel deck is the ideal carry-on item for imaginative kids! Whether youre in the air or waiting to board, parent and child alike will enjoy a variety of amazing games and activities, including:
- Silly puppet shows
- Word puzzles and games
- Easy, engaging craft projects
- Storytelling games
Take off for family fun!
Plain paper
Tape
Crayons and colored pencils
(drawing implements without caps)
Pipe cleaners (chenille stems)
Magazines
Coloring Books
Favorite story book
Modeling clay
Chewing gum
A snack
Markers
Plastic Scissors
Baby Steps
Make it look as though a baby walked on your window. Breathe on the window. Make a fist. Press the pinkie end of your fist on the misty spot on the window. Use your thumb to make a big toe at the top and your index finger to make the little toes. Now use your other hand to make the other foot. See if you can make a trail of footprints before your breath evaporates.
Standby Stencils
Check around your seat to see if you can find any objects you can use as stencils to draw with. Do you have a headset? A cup? A snack box? Keys, rings, your own hand, and all sorts of other things make interesting shapes when you draw around them. After filling a page with several different shapes, draw a picture that includes the stencils.
Handful of Change
Have a partner put a little change in your hand. Without looking, guess how much it is by figuring out which coins are quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies and then adding them up. Now its your turn to put some change (a different amount) in your partners hand.
Imaginary Adventure
Instead of being on your way to visit your grandmother in Detroit, imagine you are on a top secret adventure. Perhaps you have been sent by the _________________________ (far too confidential to even mention here) to retrieve the secret recipe for the best chocolate cake in the world. Look around you to make sure that you arent being followed. Make up your own imaginary story about this top secret trip and decide what your secret mission is.
Plane Parts
On a piece of paper, write out or draw all the different parts of an airplane. When you are done thinking of all the parts, name all the jobs that are needed to run a plane. How many people are there on the airplane now helping to run it and taking care of all the passengers? Take a guess and then ask one of the flight attendants.
Small and Big
Whats the smallest means of transportation you can think of? Whats the biggest? Name all the different methods of transporting humans that you can think of, starting from the smallest and working up to the largest. Which mode of transport can go the highest? The deepest? The fastest? Which is loudest? Quietest? The most fun? The most boring?
Hiding a Smile
Place your hand in front of your mouth while making different facial expressions, from happy to sad, with grumpy and silly in between. As you make each face, have another person try to guess what expression youre making just from looking at your eyes and other little clues, since your partner wont be able to see your mouth.
Ice Cube Painting
Materials: Paper; Markers; Cup of ice; Napkin
Make a line drawing with markers on paper. Take an ice cube and run it over your picture. This will turn your marker lines into watercolors. Try colors that will mix well together like yellow, blue, and green. Or red, blue, and purple. Use the napkin to clean up any water that gets on the tray table.
Snack Faces
On many flights, the attendants pass out snacks after takeoff. Before you gobble your treats down, arrange them into a face on your napkin. Eat them one by one, making a new face with the snacks that are still left, until you have eaten them all.
Whats in my Hand
Another person puts something small in your hand and, without looking, you try to guess what it is. If you cant figure out what it is, you can ask ten yes or no questions.
Twenty Questions
This game is played with at least two people. One person thinks of something specific on an airplane, while the other asks as many as twenty yes or no questions in order to figure out what that object might be. For example, if one person were thinking of the beverage cart, and the other person asked, Does it have something to do with food service, the answer would be Yes.
Beautiful Butterfly
Materials: An unfolded cocktail napkin; Pen or chenille stem; Markers; Water;
It takes just one fold to make this origami butterfly. Fold the napkin diagonally like the drawing on the front of this card. A pen with a clip on the cap can be a body: just slide the clip on so that the cap makes the butterflys head, and the pen is its body. If you have a chenille stem, fold it in half and wrap it around the butterfly to form the body. Twist the ends to make antennae. Or just draw the butterflys body. With a marker make spots on the butterflys wings. If you have a cup of water, dip your finger in the cup and touch one of the dots. Watch the water spread the ink out and make beautiful eye spots on the wings.
Alphathings
From your seat, look around the airplane and try to find something that begins with every letter of the alphabet. Dont forget to include things from the restroom, the cockpit, or the kitchen. If you get stuck, you can also include things that you might not see but are probably packed in somebody elses carry-on bag like keys, a laptop computer, an MP3 player, etc.
One-Fifty
Find numbers of things in the airplane that correspond to each number from one to fifty. For example, one airplane, two pilots, three flights attendantsfifty seats.
In Flight Pictures
On a piece of paper, make a list of things you might find in your magazine. For example, pictures of kids, cars, men, boats, credit cards, luggage. Now look through your in-flight magazine and put a check mark next to the item on your list every time you find a picture of it. You can add to your list as you go along, too. What item has the most number of pictures? The fewest?
Stowaway
If you were stowing away on an airplane for a secret trip somewhere, what are all the places you can think of to hide? Why would you stow away? Where would you go? How long would the trip be? What would it be like to stay in your hiding place all that time? What would you do? What would you say if you were found? Write or tell a story about your secret trip.
Doodle Pix
This is a drawing game. Begin to draw without lifting the pencil. You can make curves and loops and zigzags, or try to draw something recognizable, but you cant lift your pencil. The other person says STOP! whenever they want to. You stop immediately and give your companion the pencil. They put the pencil on the spot where you stopped and draw, without lifting their pencil, until you say STOP! Go back and forth until the page is filled up.
What Flies?
What are all the natural and man-made things you can think of that fly? Which of them can hover? Flutter? Float? Swoop? Soar? Can you think of something which flies without wings? What flying thing would you most like to ride? A joke: Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.
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