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In-Flight and Road Trip Entertainment for Kids

November 9th, 2011 | Add a Comment

We travel. A lot. We love to travel and work hard to make the most of our vacations. My family is a three hour car ride away, and it takes a minimum of two plane rides to get to Craig’s family. We love to spend our vacations in Costa Rica, so we check on the information on flights from Aerobell Airlines to get the best deals.

Our kids have always been great travelers, but every kid has their limit. Over the past five years, through research, trial and error, and paying attention to what the parents around us are doing, we’ve come up with some steel-plated ways to keep our kids happy on long travel days. Here are 5 ways to entertain the kids when traveling:

1. Food. Kids like to eat. Especially when they get to eat things they don’t normally eat. So, before a trip, I hit the store for some unique treats. This can be anything from gummy bears to starfruit. It just has to be new and fun. In the car, I buy time by packing a meal of finger foods that I can serve to them one “course” at a time. It’s a guaranteed 30 minutes of semi-quiet. Think cheese sticks, cut fruit, sandwiches cut in squares, raisins, and dum dum suckers for “dessert”.

2. Simple Activities. One of my favorites is to pack a small container of Fruit Loops (or other cereal with a hole in it) and some yarn. Older kids can string their own cereal necklace, but you might want to pre-string a necklace for younger kiddos. Edible accessories are fun to make, play with, wear, and of course, EAT (see #1). Other ideas – a small pack of molding clay (better on planes than cars), a few small, new toys from the dollar store, and early readers can circle the words they know on any page of print – maybe pay them a penny per word?

3. Find the Fun. Craig wrote a post about slow travel with kids in which he stopped at every fun place for kids between here and Indiana. The kids absolutely loved it (and took LOOONG naps when they got back on the road) and Craig had fun too. When traveling via plane, look for the play areas in the airport. If the airport you’re in doesn’t have a play place, find a quiet gate and make your own.

4. It’s Electric! I would be remiss if I didn’t mention electronic entertainment. My kiddos have Leapster Explorers that can keep them busy for quite a while. I like the Leapster games because they are educational, so the kids are still using their brains. I have several free aps loaded on my smart phone for the kids to play. We also carry with us a laptop and/or portable DVD player to watch movies on. I recently heard about the new DVD/Blu-Ray/Digital movie combo packs from my friend Meredith. I think these are great, because it keeps your Blu-Ray disc safe at home, you can bring your DVD disc with you on travels, or, if you have a tablet or smart phone, you can load the digital version on to that. Electronics are definitely a bit of an investment, but for really long travel days, I think it’s worth it.

5. Go Retro. When all else fails, we sing songs, play classic road trip games like “I spy” and have discussions about trivial things, like what we should name the pet cat we don’t have, or which super hero is the bestest. You can find ideas for travel games here.

I’ll leave you with this video: Our kids traveling, playing, using electronics, AND eating!