By Lisa T. Bergren

• Do NOT pre-board with your young children. Send one adult ahead to settle all the stuff in and leave the other adult to keep them running until closer to take-off time. Don’t wander too far, however!
• Have pre-boarder grab extra blankets and pillows to have on hand if you think your child might blessedly doze off (if the airline offers even offers them; increasingly, they’re in short supply)
• We love WikkiStix for young children. It will keep them busy for an hour, making things out of them, they’re reusable, and there’s no clean-up!
• If you have older children and you’re not afraid of pieces getting lost, check out Rush Hour—great problem solving/puzzle exercise. Usually comes with a bag to keep all the pieces—and the pieces are not so small they’ll be easily lost.
• We know you want your children to see the countryside, to absorb the details and the experience, but trust us, bring your electronics! You can limit how much they listen to their Ipod, watch DVDs, or play their Nintendo, but you’ll be glad you let them bring them along.
—Consider buying 2-3 new games or movies that they cannot see or use until they are on the plane
—Purchase extra batteries for electronics for long plane rides or for when you can’t get them charged in time
• Children can sit on their neck pillows and extra airline blankets/pillows if they can’t see central aisle movie screens

Entertainment on Site

• Encourage kids to pay attention to details; give each a small blank journal and ask them to draw a specific architectural detail or painting in a gallery and record each day’s events—what they did, what they saw, what made them laugh/cry
• At museums, in a room in which you want to spend more than three minutes, have them quickly sketch their favorite painting or sculpture
—Point out your favorite aspect/portion and have them do the same, then just sketch that part—otherwise, you might be waiting for them to finish!
—Give them a time limit before they start and warn them when they have a minute left
• Give each child a cheaper digital camera with a LOT of digital memory—then they can take all the pictures they like
—Help them cull through and delete those that didn’t turn out well & sort/save those that did!
• Bring a new comic book for each child that they can swap with others in the family or give to a child in the host country
• Bring at least one new age-appropriate novel for each child
• Bring an age-appropriate magazine for each child
• Have them look at menus and guess what each item might be. Bring a guide book that will help them translate.
• Practice counting in the host country’s language
• Practice “please” “excuse me” and “thank you” in local language so they can try it out
• When you have a little extra time, map out a pedestrian route and get the kids to navigate. Map reading and compass skills are great skills to learn—and in a pinch, asking for directions from locals, with you right behind them, is good experience to gain too.
• Barter for adult excursion time in exchange for kid-friendly rewards like ice cream/gelato, or local candy that they have to guess if they’ll like
• Give each child a budget per day for shopping—they can choose to spend it each day or save for something bigger at the end
• Try and weave in kid-oriented excursions into every day:
—Find a park and picnic there; kids enjoy trying to communicate with kids who speak a different language
—Look for museums that have at least one kid-friendly exhibit
—Stop every few days in an intriguing tourist trap like a maze or a medieval torture museum. These places might make you groan, but the kids will love it. And really…if they’re good enough to lug through the Uffizi with you…

Have an Entertainment/Engaging Your Kiddo tip you’d care to share? Please COMMENT below!

Photo by Jasmic