Waiting, waiting, waiting…..sometimes you stand in lines waiting for connections. Sometimes you sit in airports and rail stations, etc….waiting for connections. You might be wondering, “how do we keep the kids occupied while waiting or traveling long routes?”

stock a good backpack

• things we packed in our backpacks and carryons, etc were:
• books
• electronic games
• batteries
• playing cards
• headphones (extras since they get lost)
• personal DVD players
• Rubik’s cube
• snacks
• hacky sacks
• inexpensive camera
• journal

tell exciting, suspenseful stories: My husband and I told imaginative stories to our toddler boys while waiting in a 2 hour line at an airport in Mexico during a 20-member family trip. We had the only little kids at that time and there was a jam-packed tiny airport full of college travelers.

Save your most exciting stories for times like this! :We were sweating it out and each holding a toddler in our arms while we kept this story going. Thank goodness it worked! toddler/preschooler leashes these are controversial for some parents and spectators but I appreciated my “leash” or “tether”. I’ve never lost a kid! 🙂

get caught up on summer remediation skills: this will be the least “popular” idea with your kids but sometimes it’s easier to corral them and get this done while traveling rather than at home when they are distracted by playdates, swimming, camps, art classes, etc…

musical instruments: my oldest son is the most musical of our kids so he often brought a ukulele along to many of our trips. In the picture above, you can see he also played an Irish pipe on this particular car trip within Ireland. The ukulele was small enough to fit in his carryon or he attached it to the outside straps.

Harmonicas are super easy to pack. He bought a little drum in Morocco but it didn’t last the trip because it broke. In the picture to the left, he’s playing a sitar (not a ukulele), but you can see at any age, he liked incorporating musical instruments on our trips!