Tips for Traveling with Toddlers

One of our readers asked about how to entertain a toddler when traveling that was not DVD related.

I have traveled both in the car on 4 hour road trips as well as one time flying with two kids under 4 yrs of age. We did not bring along movies to watch on the plane or in the car. Instead, we took our trip bags.

I read about this many years ago. I thought it was great! So, I took the basics they talked about and made it our own.

The thought behind the trip bag is for each kid to have a special bag full of goodies for their trip. I used inexpensive back packs that could be reused for other purposes after our trips. In each bag there would be gender specific toys such as cars, a little doll baby, or dinosaurs, as well as activities.

Some of those activities:

• bubbles
• color books and crayons (get really creative and use those special don’t color on anything else markers or funky papers)
• mini dry erase markers and wipe off pens
• little reading books
• hand held puzzles/ games (like what you would use in church to keep them quiet)
• A special snack and maybe a small drink
• When we went to visit family out of state. We made a little picture book with each persons head shot. During the trip we would go thru those pictures and name each family member.
• Matching games

You really can be creative here! The only rule is that they can not look in the trip bag until you’re actually on the trip. And you repack it with one or two new things for the way back home.

My kids have loved these trips bags! Even now that they are older, when we go on a 4 hour road trip, they expect to have a small bag of sorts to occupy their time in the car.

Jessica can be found writing at Life Learning Leonards.

photo by codechimp_net

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