You’ve planned your holiday, everything’s booked and now, all you have to do is figure out how to keep your young kids occupied on the flight. Here we have a few tips on activities and ideas to keep them occupied and happy for the journey.

* Magazine scavenger hunts – any magazine will do, even the airplane magazine. On each page, pick an item in your mind and ask your child to find it on the page. A variation on this is for older children is to ask them to find and draw pictures of 5 or 6 items from in the magazine without telling them which page to look on.

* Use fun pictures on your digital camera or mobile phone to entertain your child. Maybe pictures of people they know, places you’re going to visit or have been recently such as a trip to the zoo or a party. Relive the fun telling stories about where or what you saw.

* Learn some new finger rhymes such as two little tweety birds, or church and steeple, and play them with your child on the journey. They’ll be fascinated trying to copy your actions. (Try and keep to rhymes with small actions because of the limitations of the space on a plane).

* Try to get your kids to gently make friends with the people on the plane around you. If they’ve started the journey being friendly, cute and blowing kisses and playing peek-a-boo, then your travel companions are more likely to be understanding if they find it a struggle later in the journey.

* Pack snacks in small Tupperware containers that can become a plaything when the eating is over. Try to make a game of the snacking and make it last as long as possible by getting them to take as small a bite as they can each time, or have little snacks and get them to try to eat just one at a time.

* Simple items can become toys for young toddlers – screwing and unscrewing a bottle, opening and closing a tub or small purse. Counting the beads on a necklace, or practicing zipping something up. Older toddlers can learn new things like tying a lace, or doing up buttons on clothing or a bag.

* Get them to make up and tell you stories about what you’re going to do on your holiday. For younger ones you can ask them will you do this, or this. For older ones, they can tell you most of the story and get really imaginative.

* Make sure you have a favourite toy or blanket with you so that when they do get tired they have something to comfort them. Make them a special nest of pillow and blanket on their seat and make an adventure of sleeping on the plane.

* Sick bags may just be sick bags to you, but a pack of crayons and your child can turn them into a hand puppet to play with! The same applies to empty paper cups and plates.