theSun, tues 16 Dec 2008
BEFORE the kids came along, all you did was pack your own bag and off you went for your holiday! If you were driving, you’d probably be able to get to your destination without having to stop if the journey was not too long.
If you were taking a plane, you’d probably wonder what in-flight movies you could watch and looked forward to catching up on reading or sleeping.
With young children in tow, however, these ideas are best abandoned lest you stress yourself out trying to please yourself and everybody. The time spent in getting from point A to B needs to be considered too.
When travelling with children, you need a bag of tricks up your sleeve to minimise the impatience, boredom, restlessness or what is commonly termed ‘cabin fever’.
Many a time, I got caught with persistent questions of "Are we there yet?" when travelling with my child.
Planning ahead saves you the irritation of having to deal with the little ‘buzzing bees’ that keep coming back to you with questions or complaints.
Bring along some of their favourite things to keep them distracted and occupied such as books, card games, or CDs.
Pack along some new ones too, to get them excited and happy.
Have some healthy snacks and drinks handy as hungry children could get a little antsy at times.
Pack a small bag of presents wrapped in a few layers. These presents could be small toys they’ve forgotten about or cheap novelties.
Dish them out sparingly to make your stash last the whole trip. The additional layers of wrapping would keep the anticipation going into extra time, making the discovery more exciting – hopefully.
For older children, you could stick a page from an activity book onto each layer of wrapping as part of the ‘game’ rules.
They would need to solve the puzzle or complete the simple activity before they move on to unwrapping the next layer and the next, before they reach their ‘prize’.
On a car trip, have a competition to see who is fastest in totaling up the plate numbers of passing cars. Play ‘I Spy’, read billboards and tabulate the most-advertised category of products. Besides keeping them occupied, they would get some math and reading exercise done the fun way.
Keep them quiet with an activity book of word puzzles, stickers, mazes, or dot-to-dots. Or compile one of your own by visiting many children’s websites which offer free printable games and puzzles.
Instead of reading to them or getting them to read by themselves, bring along some children’s audio books or better yet, download some free ones onto your PDA or iPod.
I chanced upon this website called Storynory (http://storynory.com) which provides free downloadable audio stories including classics, fairytales, and original ones.
Their stories have become my lifesaver more than once, not only while travelling, but during fidgety moments and even when Daddy is too tired to tell a string of bedtime stories!
Creativity and simplicity are the keywords.
Since you can’t bring along your entire playroom, think of small but fun items to pack into your bag of tricks.
Even a few small disposable empty bottles to match the caps with could keep a toddler busy for some time.
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