Air Craft will get parents and kids crafting while they travel

Ah, the terror of a long plane journey with your children. Figuring out how to keep them amused for hours while cooped up in a cabin is a challenge for parents all over the world. Perhaps Air Craft can help.

It’s a project that’s trying to raise $15,000 on crowdfunding website Kickstarter, and which has just gone live with its campaign. Its creator Theresa says she came up with the idea after noticing that when it comes to keeping children occupied while travelling “knitting needles and colouring books have been replaced with tablet screens and DVD players”.

Air Craft wants to reverse that trend:

“I set out to develop a new way to encourage kids and adults to use the hours traveling to create. I want to help families shift away from, or limit, screen time and instead have kids and parents connect with their inner creativity through crafts. There is tremendous value in having kids use their imagination to transform raw materials into a craft of their own.”

The actual product will take the form of a choice of two kits: one for 3–6 year-olds and one for 6–10 year-olds. You’ll get three craft mini-projects for children, one for a parent, plus stickers and colour pencils – all inside a box that’s designed to fit on top of an average airline tray table.

It’s a really fun idea, and I hope it reaches its goal: these kits would be perfect to be sold in airport shops, after all. And I like the idea of not just distracting children with a screen on a flight, at least for a while.

A pledge of $24 or more will get you an Air Craft kit (you choose which age group) when they’re delivered in January 2018, with higher-tier options to add t-shirts and more kits.