It was that time again to make the pilgrimage to Grandma’s on the east coast. Lovely trip–obviously any break in routine during a pandemic is nice–with an unlimited supply of chocolate cupcakes. Thanks Grandma! But there is the small wrinkle of keeping a four-year old occupied during the trip (and not fussing about the mask, or bored, or whatever).

First and foremost, screentime! We are pretty minimal screentime household. Which means that when you need (e.g. 6-hour plane flight) Chandra can do 5 straight hours of Octonauts with a grin. You save it for when you need it.

The Stand

The awkwardly named Unitronworld Cell Phone Holder

This very weird piece of plastic mostly reminds me of those weird puzzles I would get in my christmas stocking. The kind where there’s a ring, two pieces of wood and you had to figure out how to get the ring out. But this stand, as a piece of engineering, it’s pretty clever. It has two clamps, one to connect to the back of the seat and one to hold the screen. Some articulated hinges make it pretty flexible to get the angle right.

The Netflix!

While many flights have pretty good in-flight options, I prefer a “bird in hand” approach and download ahead of time. Netflix has a pretty good download manager and has two shows that Chandra just loved.

Both of these were just solid hits. Octonauts probably a little more than Magic School Bus, as the 12 minute episodes fit the attention span a bit better. But MSB benefited from brand awareness from the library. A close match.

headphones & adapter

I have absolutely no idea which brand of headphones we use, but I’m sure Amazon has a billion to choose from. Of note, many of them have a volume limiter to prevent eardrums from exploding. I recommend disabling it on an airplane so they can hear the show while on the plane. If you plan on using a cell phone, you may also need:

Apparently the 1/8″ audiojack was just too pure for this world. Thanks Apple.