Inside: Travelling activities for kids to keep them occupied, excited, and happy during those long journeys. Scroll down to download our Travelling Activities for Kids Printable Pack!
Travelling with children can be challenging, especially when it comes to keeping them entertained during long journeys. Whether you're embarking on a road trip, hopping on a train, or flying to a distant destination, restless kids can turn the journey into a stressful experience. However, fear not! In this blog, we'll explore a variety of engaging travelling activities for kids that are not only easy to transport and budget-friendly but also promise to keep boredom at bay without relying on screen time. So, buckle up and get ready to make your next family adventure a memorable one!
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Preparing Your Children for Travelling
Before we jump into our list of fun engaging travelling activities for kids, here are more ideas that you can incorporate into your trip preparation to not only help your children feel more involved and excited about the journey but also create meaningful opportunities for learning and bonding as a family.
It may be useful to share some facts and information with children about your chosen destination. A children’s atlas can give information about location, language, culture and climate. Children can also be involved with packing their travel bags and may choose some items which they think they will need or are special to them.
- Language Learning: Introduce basic phrases or words in the language spoken at your destination. This can be a fun way for children to engage with the local culture and feel more confident communicating during the trip.
- Virtual Tours: Before embarking on the journey, explore virtual tours or videos of landmarks and attractions you plan to visit. This helps build excitement and familiarity with the destinations.
- Destination Research: Dive into atlases, documentaries, or storybooks about the culture, wildlife, and attractions of your destination. Engaging children in learning about facts and information about the destinations will help them appreciate the trip better.
- Packing their Travel Bags: When children pack their own bags for trips, they learn responsibility and independence. It teaches them to make decisions, organise their belongings, and feel prepared for their trip..
- Snack Selection: Involve children in choosing and packing snacks for the journey. Opt for healthy options along with some special treats to keep energy levels up and make the travel time more enjoyable.
- Safety Awareness: Teach children about important safety measures during travel, such as staying close in crowded areas, memorising emergency contact information, and following any specific travel guidelines or rules.
- Travelling Activities: Pack a variety of travel-friendly activities to keep children entertained during downtime. Check out this list of Travelling Activities for Kids below!
Travelling Activities for Kids
Travel Activity 1: Sticker Games
When I know we have a long journey planned, I gather a collection of various stickers: different images, sizes, colours, shapes, and textures, which I place in a sealed wallet for my children to access when needed. Children love stickers; they are fantastic for fine motor development, and various games can be created using a sticker collection.
A top tip for younger children who may struggle when peeling stickers from a sheet is to remove all the sticky backing, leaving just the stickers on the sheet, making them easier to peel off.
Encourage children to create a picture on paper using various types of stickers. Then, they can play simple I Spy-type games with an adult or sibling. For example, children could be asked to circle:
- Their favourite things
- Something round/soft/long etc.
- Something coloured green, black, gold etc.
- All the things beginning with a particular letter
Here are more fun kids' travelling activities that you could do with stickers:
- Drawing circles on paper with numbers inside where children need to count out the correct number of stickers.
- Asking children to write speech bubbles next to character stickers.
- Sorting stickers into circles by size: small, medium, large.
- Drawing a straight, curved, squiggly, or zigzag line and asking children to place a line of stickers on it.
- Drawing a simple shape such as a dress and asking children to decorate their dress with stickers.
- Children could be given a set of similar stickers such as animals/insects and could be asked to sort them into their own groups based on shared characteristics.
Travel Activity 2: Playdough Travel Kit
My two children love playdough, and I've discovered it's a fantastic way to keep them engaged while travelling. That's why I always make sure to pack a Playdough Travel Kit for our journeys. This kit typically includes:
- Mini playdough pots
- Mini rolling pin, cutting tools, or cookie cutters
- Their favourite small toys, like dinosaurs, figures, cars, or peg dolls
- Various loose parts of interest, such as plastic gems, flowers, twigs, shells, buttons, or stones
If we're using playdough in the car, I ensure we have a plastic craft tray handy to place on their laps for easy cleanup.
Sets could be made around a theme, or quite often, random selections of objects can offer more possibilities and spark creativity. Whether they're rolling, cutting, stamping, or crafting their own narratives, my children thoroughly enjoy the endless possibilities playdough offers during our travels.
Related: If your child loves playdough, here are 8 Educational Playdough Activities that will be a hit in your home!
Travel Activity 3: Travel Pasta Accessory Kit
In my cupboard, I have a well- used bag of dried pasta shapes which I coloured by squirting paint into a zip lock bag, coating the pasta before letting them dry. This bag also contains pipe cleaners, which are perfect for grabbing on the go!
Children can string pasta onto the pipe cleaners to create their own bracelets or connect pipe cleaners to make longer necklaces. By using various shapes and colours of pasta, kids can engage in pattern-making, providing a fantastic fine motor finger workout.
Related: If your child is working on fine motor skills, check out these 12 Fun Pincer Grasp Activities for Kids, and 10 Painting Activities which Support Fine Motor Development!
Travel Activity 4: Travel Shape Making Kit
A brilliant open-ended travelling activity for kids, requiring only two resources, is to provide children with wooden craft sticks and cut-up pipe cleaners, encouraging them to create 2D shapes. Children can create a variety of shapes such as squares, triangles, pentagons, or even stars. For younger children, simply winding pipe cleaners around the sticks or stacking them together can provide endless entertainment.
Related: Extend your child's learning about shapes by bringing along my Snail Shapes Printable Activity. It's fast to prepare, lightweight and convenient - perfect for travelling!
Travel Activity 5: Portable Lego Kit
A portable Lego kit is an excellent travelling activity for kids to keep them engaged during travel. Regardless of age or developmental stage, children find endless creativity with Lego, fostering teamwork and imaginative discussions. Crafting a Lego kit is simple: attach a base plate to the lid of a container using a hot glue gun, and fill the container with a selection of bricks. Younger children may prefer the larger Duplo bricks, while older ones can choose from smaller lego bricks.
Many Lego games can be played whilst travelling such as:
- Set a number of different bricks, like 15, and challenge children to build a model with them. Take this model apart and take out one brick. The idea is to keep removing a brick and to build a different model each time.
- Choose a simple object to make; each participant constructs a version. The person who uses the fewest bricks to build the object wins.
- Compete to build the tallest tower within a specific time frame.
- Design and name their own alien or robot model. Share with the family where it is from and what it likes to do.
Travel Activity 6: Create Washi Tape Pictures
Washi tapes capture children’s attention with its vibrant colours and diverse designs. Their compact sizes make them a convenient addition to travel bags, ready for immediate ripping and sticking. Children can unleash their creativity by using washi tape to create various pictures or enhance their journals.
Older children may enjoy creating a personalised journal highlighting their trip and recording their thoughts. Providing a map of the trip allows them to mark off each destination as they pass, while incorporating photographs and embellishing their journals with washi tape adds a unique touch.
Younger children could stick tape directly onto airline tray tables, creating letters, shapes or even tracks for toy cars.
Travel Activity 7: Travel Posting Tin
When my children were younger, one of their favourite activities was posting and dropping objects. To create a portable posting game for travelling, I repurposed a circular metal container by cutting a slot, slightly larger than the objects, into the plastic lid. Young children will delight in posting and emptying objects into their tin, happily repeating the process. The wooden coins produce a satisfying sound as they drop into the tin, making it perfect for listening games where siblings can guess the number of coins dropped.
Travel Activity 8: Sticky Note Gallery
Sticky notes are a fantastic travel resource, taking up little space and offering many opportunities. Children will love creating their own window galleries showing their doodles, or even creating family portraits!
Try games that can be played using sticky notes on an airline tray, such as Tic-tac-toe. Children could place a selection of numbers in a sequence or letters in alphabetical order and adults could play ‘Guess my number/letter’ by giving clues. An adult could place four sticky notes together and draw a picture before mixing up the notes and asking children to reassemble the pieces back together. Sticky notes can also be placed over pictures in books creating a flap book for young children to explore.
Travel Activity 9: Story Bag
My two children enjoy making up their own stories, as this is something we often do at bedtime. A useful travel activity for kids is to create a story bag by filling a cloth bag with small, random objects or pictures. Children and adults can take turns to choose 3 to 5 items from the bag, considering items which could represent scenes, characters, emotions, animals or objects.
The stories that unfold are entirely spontaneous and can be silly, spooky, adventurous or magical, while following a beginning, middle, end structure. There may be a problem to solve, a quest to go on and there could even be a moral to the tale. Younger children may find it easier to retell a known story at first or could put their own creative twist on a traditional tale.
Travel Activity 10: I Spy Books and Bottles
I Spy books are excellent travelling activities for kids as they can engage children for longer periods, helping to strengthen their working memory. For younger children I Spy bottles offer a tactile and interactive resource that they will enjoy exploring, discussing and shaking. Creating an I Spy bottle is simple and fun, they can be easily made by adding dried rice or pasta shapes and various small objects to a bottle.
Travel Activity 11: Scavenger Hunt
Create a scavenger hunt with items or landmarks to look out for during the journey. This keeps children entertained during road trips or plane rides while also encouraging them to observe their surroundings.
Download this free Travelling Activities for Kids Printable Pack!
More Tips for Travelling with Children
I suggest spreading out these travel activities for kids throughout your journey, both on the way to your destination and on the return trip. Keeping these travel activities a surprise until the day of the journey can keep their engagement levels high and their excitement palpable.
In addition to the travel activities mentioned, essential items for our family include colouring supplies, puzzles and books, and magazines. And let's not forget the importance of having a variety of snacks readily available!
Don't underestimate the timeless appeal of old-school games like hangman, card games, 'Would you rather?', 'Guess in 10', and alphabet memory games, which can entertain the whole family for hours.
I hope this blog post proves helpful in keeping your kids occupied, excited, and happy during those long journeys.
Here's to your next trip being a memorable and enjoyable one for everyone!
Keeping children entertained during travel can be a challenge, but with some planning and creativity, it's definitely manageable. Play interactive games like "I Spy" or "The Alphabet Game" to pass the time. Bring along a variety of travelling activities to keep them engaged. Check out our list of 10 engaging travelling activities for kids. Keep a variety of healthy snacks on hand for snack time. Use storytelling as a way to spark their imagination and keep them entertained. Plan breaks for stretching and exploring to break up the monotony of travel. With a bit of preparation and patience, travelling with kids can be enjoyable for the whole family!
Travelling skills for kids are things they learn to do when they go on trips. This includes knowing how to pack their belongings, follow safety rules, understand airport or transportation rules, be patient during delays or long trips, talk about what they need, show respect to people and places they encounter, and feel comfortable in new environments while being open to trying new experiences or foods.
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