With March Break around the corner you may be getting ready to take a trip to the sunny South or a road trip to Gramma’s house. However long your vacation travel is, you’re going to need to be ready to keep your kiddies occupied and happy for the journey. Here are a few tips and tricks to keep everyone happy!
1. Keep Things Organized
You dont want little pieces, random craft items and crayons all over the car, plane or train. Keeping everything in a binder will keep it all organized, even the crayons/markers!
2. Keep Them Entertained
Oh the portable DVD player and the iPad…lifesavers! These little gizmos are fab for long car/plane trips. You can also attach headphones to them if you have multiple children watching different DVDs. Our DVD player just attaches to the headrest and voila…an hour and a half of movie entertainment and no “are we there yet”?.
While I definitely whip out the DVD player or iPad, I would get the mommy guilt if my kids used them the whole trip. So packing books, colouring books, crafts etc to is a great way to keep their interest:
You can also make you’re own “I SPY” games and print them out. Just create a few pages of clip art for on the road (ie: cows, barn, stop sign, red car, truck etc). Super easy and your kiddies will love it.
3. Snacks and Treats
Who doesn’t get the munchies when travelling? It’s a good idea to have yummy snacks for everyone in the car or plane. Hungry kids = cranky kids! Obviously its good to have healthy snacks but I can’t help it if a few chocolate bars and chippies also happen to jump in the bag!
4. Surprises!
My kids love the Dollarstore. Who doesn’t love the Dollarstore? Pick up a few cute toys or little things that you think your kids will like (ie: dinkie cars, playdough, silly putty, slime, trucks, Pez (I used to love Pez) etc) and wrap them up. Throughout your journey, you can get them to open them.
That’s it. Hope this gives you some ideas for your March Break Madness journey with little ones. As long as you have a few things to keep them busy, your roadtrip will be fresh.fabulous.sophisticated.
Keep it Beautiful.
Alicia
so so so true need to keep them busy, one year me and the hubby were amazed at how quiet the girls were in the backseat and it was all to do with books and the travel size games which I love because the pieces are magnets
This is so true,children need to be busy
I often use the DVD player to keep my son entertained. But he really likes those yes/no books with the invisible ink pen and he actually learns something while he’s playing.
Great ideas! We also have a collection of “busy bags” for our three-year-old to use (only bringing stuff that doesn’t roll away for trips, though). Googling or looking on Pinterest for Busy Bags gives tons of ideas. Kind of like a few of your steps there, but packaged so they can dig in and entertain themselves.
Every trip we take I am thankful that my kids are easy to entertain and also entertain each other easily! They are now 7 and 9 and are quite the independent little travellers. For long car trips they especially love audio books!
I am entertaining my kids for the day they were born; I am dear Daddy 😀
The best way to entertain ( or to keep them busy) is through being a kid again. I think one has to understand the psyche of kids, what they want, when, how and definitely why! Learn the secrets and make them happy. Thanks for sharing these tips, I second that..:)
I enjoyed this. Thank you for the great ideas.
Great blog, I agree the way to happy kids is through good organisation 🙂
I think the busy bags are a wonderful idea and I will save these ideas for road trips this summer with the grandkids
The airport customs officials weren’t too keen on the playdough the last flight I had taken. Might be wise to leave that and silly putty off the flight traveling items.
These toys are really cute and perfect for travel because they’re really small