Aeroplane Friendly Sock Puppet Kit

When Rascal was about 20 months old, we flew from New Zealand to Europe to see the family.

It was a LOOONG journey and although we were well equipped with books, toys and activities for her, some of the best fun of the journey was had with the free socks that the airline hand out. I can't remember all of the things that we did with them, but using them as hand puppets was definitely the favourite.

For our journey to Europe this time, I thought I'd be prepared and take these puppets to the next level with a special sock puppet making kit.

Now this was not as easy as it sounds.

In order to get through airport security needles, scissors and glue could not be included in the kit. I also wanted to keep it small as hand luggage can very quickly become heavy and bulky when you are travelling with children.

The first thing that I found for the kit was some needles- big plastic darning needles.

Next I assembled a selection of buttons to use as eyes and noses. Some buttons were matching, some were one-offs as it occurred to me that children often like to give their creations personality with mismatched eyes (Sure enough, Rascal chose mismatched eyes for both of the puppets that we created!)

I cut out some felt ears and pre-made sewing holes in them so that they could be sewn with the big plastic needles.

I got some small pom poms and threaded embroidery floss through them so that they could be sewn onto the socks as noses or other decoration.

Various colours of embroidery floss cut into shortish lengths were included to provide mouths and sew on other detail.

I intended to also include some pre-threaded small bows to serve as bow ties for the boys or hair ties for the girls, but didn't get round to it in the end.

I had great fun coming up with ideas for this wee kit and my effort definitely paid off! Rascal loved helping me to create puppets and had a ball playing with them.

I would suggest that it is probably best to hand this kit over early in the journey if your child is still fairly young, as at this stage of the journey parents are likely to still have the patience and energy to help create a masterpiece. I have to admit that I was the one who did the majority of the sewing as it was a bit difficult for Rascal, but this did not detract at all from the fun that we had together.

And just to prove that we used the kit- here is one of our masterpieces (unfortunately I couldn't find the other one to take photos of it)