Travel is one of the most important experiences there is for kids. After all, it helps to teach them all about the world around them and broadens their mind to new possibilities and cultures. Unfortunately, travel has been pretty restricted at various points in the last year due to the Pandemic, but with the vaccine begging to roll out, it seems as if more visits to places both near and far are on the cards.
Of course, traveling with kids can also be a bit challenging at times. You see they can get bored, hungry, tired, and out of sorts because they are out of their routine. Fortunately, there are some tactics you can use to make sure every trip, from a 12-hour plane flight to a visit to a local park, go as smoothly as possible. Read on to find out what they are.
Snacks are essential.
Hungry kids can be a real handful, but when you find yourself out in the middle of nowhere on a road trip or stuck thousands of miles in the air on a plane, a snacky child can be a nightmare! That is why no matter what type of trip you are on it’s vital that you have plenty of snacks to keep them full.
Happily, it’s not hard to put together a collection of kid-friendly snacks for your journey. One option for doing this is to get a plastic tray with the little compartments and then fill these with things like cheese cubes, pretzels, goldfish, grapes, mini cookies and the like. Of course, you will need to make sure any food you provide is age appropriate because for younger children grapes can be a choking hazard. It’s also important that if you do include fresh food like cheese, vegetable sticks, and fruit that you make sure the items are left in the tray too long such as overnight. Oh, and washing out the tray before each trip is essential too!
Unfortunately, you can’t take one of these trays on a plane because of security issues. However, it’s worth remembering that there are always shops where you can buy snacks after security. Something that means you can still create your own snack pack for your child and that will cost you much less than the one they sell on the plane as well.
Provide entertainment during the trip.
Providing entertainment during the trip is also another important aspect of making traveling with kids a great deal easier. Once again there are many different options you can choose from here.
The first is to go the electronic route and invest in games for their phones that they can play in a car, bus or train. Electronic travel games can also work well if your kids don’t have phones. Although if you are travelling in your own vehicle you can install portable DVD players and screens on the back of the front seats.
However, you may want to use the trip as an opportunity to praise the kids away from the screen for a bit? In this case, why not set up games that include spotting particular sights along the way, or counting the number of red coloured cars you pass?
If you are on a long journey you can break up the trip with entertaining stops such as roadside attractions or even taking small detours to visit well-known sites nearby. You can make the latter even more fun for the kids by getting them something like these Spongebob masterpiece meme figures and get them to take a picture of them in each place you visit. Then they will not only have a task to complete at each stop, but they will create a fun photo record of the experience which they can share with friends or on social media when they get home.
Get them enthusiastic about the trip before you go.
Finally, another way that you can make sure your trip with the kids goes as smoothly as possible is to get them enthusiastic before you leave. The way to do this is to discuss the trip with them and explain why you are going, as well as the places they will get to see.
You can also ask them to use travel guides or look online for attractions they would like to visit once you have arrived. Something that can really help them to get on board with the whole experience and negate a lot of the behaviour issues that might otherwise arise.
