Traveling with kids is often a challenge, especially when it’s across long distances. Younger kids, in particular, can get very frustrated with prolonged travel, the lack of interesting and engaging things to do, the often insufficient or restless sleep, and the lack of familiar things around to rely upon. In such situations, giving your child a phone or a tablet to keep them entertained is not just the easiest but the only feasible thing for a parent to do.
This “screen time” for kids is often maligned by people as something bad, something parents should avoid whenever possible. And, it’s true that many of the things kids do with their screen time aren’t all that worthwhile. Just watching kids’ cartoons for hours at a time or browsing TikTok is hardly the most educational or fulfilling experience for a child.
Fortunately, “Screen time” doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing and there are actually educational screen-time activities that can be useful for keeping kids engaged while traveling. Here are our 5 suggestions.
Read more:
- How Vacations Help Families Recharge Without Distractions
- Adventure Awaits: Making Family Travel Unforgettable
- Balancing Relaxation and Adventure: A Parent’s Guide to Family Trips
1. Coding games
Teaching a pre-schooler to code can seem like a tall order, but it’s actually both doable and very beneficial for the child. In fact, the role of coding in education for kids in the K-8 age range is quite well-researched and established at this point. Of course, you can’t just get any online coding course, load it onto your kid’s tablet, and expect any positive results.
However, there are actually great coding courses, often designed as coding games, that are specifically made for children as young as the K-8 age range. Such coding games are excellent at keeping a child engaged while traveling, just as any other video game would, but also teach them the basics of coding at the same time.
2. Writing
Writing can also seem like an unlikely thing to get your child to do on a tablet, rather than watching cartoons or playing games. After all, most kids hate reading too, so, why would a child be interested in writing while traveling?
Fortunately, there are great ways to get your child to start doing some writing, especially if you’re traveling. For example, you can tell your child to write a list of all the things they want to do when you get to where you’re traveling. You can also tell them to go online and do some research on the things that can be done there, such as cool places to visit. This is the type of activity that can occupy a child for hours, all while getting them used to reading, researching, and writing.
And, if you’re traveling back from a vacation, you can ask your child to write a travelogue of sorts, such as a short blog post about your travels that can be shared online.
3. Drawing and designing
Tablets are great for drawing things, which is both a creative and a very engaging thing for a child to do. There are even more educational versions of this, too, as there are sites and apps designed for kid-friendly 3D design tasks. With something like this, you can ask your child to design you something they would be interested in or something related to your travels. This is a great way to not only keep your child happy while traveling, but also expand their design thinking.
4. Making animations or video editing
Kids love animations, but you don’t have to be an adult to make an animation either. There are great sites and apps out there that make video editing very easy, even for a child. With something like that, you can get your child to edit a video collage of your travel photos or videos, to edit an existing video you made during your travels into something more fun and dynamic that can be shared with family and friends later.
5. Learning another language
Few things are better than learning a new language, and traveling abroad is the best excuse one can have to learn at least a few words and phrases. This is a great opportunity to see if your child happens to have a knack for learning languages and get them excited about it.
If not, you can still occupy your child’s time with researching interesting cultural, historical, and contemporary tidbits of information about the places you’ll be visiting. This is the type of activity that’s not only educational and engaging, but can be useful for you too once you get to where you’re going.
