The Babble List: 10 Toddler Vacation Tips
From island hops to city jaunts, how one family stays sane.
by Meredith Broussard
May 27, 2009
Get a room with a view. When you travel with a small child, you always want a room with a decent view because looking out the window is an extremely entertaining pastime for children. In our hotel in Boston, we had a view of the Prudential Center mall and the Barnes & Noble inside it, as well as the cars on Mass Ave. I thought at first that I’d prefer the view from a higher floor, but my toddler thought it was great to be on a lower floor. We watched the people cross the street below; we looked at the people in the Barnes & Noble café. It was plenty entertaining when we had a few moments to kill in the hotel room.
Always get new toys for the trip.
A grandmother once told me that new, quiet activities are essential for a plane ride. Big spender that I am, I headed to the dollar aisle at Target to fill up my son’s toddler-sized backpack with stuff that he could take on our recent Spring Break plane ride. I went for light objects so he’d be more likely to carry the backpack himself. The big hits: a Curious George notebook with stickers, and a bag of fuzzy pipecleaners that we turned into pipecleaner animals and pipecleaner glasses (and pipecleaner trees, and pipecleaner birds in the pipecleaner trees, etc). I brushed up on my pipecleaner skillz with a few of the tutorials available online.
Bring plenty of Band-Aids.
Know what a toddler loves about having his very own box of Band-Aids? Everything. You can take them out of the box, put them back in the box, count them, line them up, pull them apart, cry when they don’t go back together. You can stick them on the seat, stick them on your body, stick them on your clothes, stick them on your parents, stick them on the airsickness bags, stick them on your stuffed animals, and then show your handiwork to the doting flight attendants. You can act out medical dramas with your parents if they aren’t too grouchy, you can color on the Band-Aid box, put pretzels in the box, take pretzels out of the box… the possibilities are endless. I’m usually stingy about Band-Aids (only one per boo-boo), so my kid was thrilled to have an entire box to himself. For my toddler, the biggest hit of all time was a $2.50 box of Spiderman Band-Aids that I bought to occupy him on a five-hour flight. The Spiderman Band-Aids were such a big success on the way down, I bought a box of Scooby-Doo Band-Aids for the flight back.
Print some coloring pages.
Coloring books are great for traveling; custom-designed coloring books are even better. ( If you’re traveling by car, think about investing in a clipboard or another surface that your child can lean on while coloring.) Grab your stapler and a few sheets of paper, then go to any of these sites for free coloring pages you can print out and bring on your trip:
Crayola's pages include color-in projects like a dump truck that can be attached to a juice box. Bring tape!
Dover Publications coloring books are delightfully old-fashioned and intricate. Check out their free page samples here; my favorites include the Firefighters Coloring Book ("Mike runs outside to stop traffic so that the big engine can pull into the street safely") and the picture of the Harlequin Tuskfish in the Great Barrier Reef Coloring Book.
National Geographic Kids offers old-school illustrations of mustangs, Emperor penguins, prairie dogs, giant tree frogs, Western lowland gorillas, and three different kinds of sea turtles—all the wild animals you could possibly want. I particularly like the three-toed sloth.
About.com's Family Crafts page has dozens of simple pictures sorted by topic.
A long trip is the perfect time to introduce your kid to vintage cartoon characters. Print out coloring pages with pictures of old-school cartoon characters and tell your kid the story of what happened when Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble met the Schmoo, or the story of the day that Smurfette first appeared in the Smurf village.
Want characters your kids already love? Check out the print-out pages at PBS Kids.
Going to a warm place? Don’t forget that afternoon nap conflicts with prime time on the beach.
There are two strategies for dealing with the afternoon nap issue. Option 1: reserve a room with a balcony, or a first-floor room with outdoor access. It sounds simple, but I can tell you that it made a huge difference in my happiness on our beach vacation. While my little one napped in our first-floor beachfront room, I sat outside in the sun and read my trashy mystery novel or chatted with friends. It was perfection.
Option 2: Avoid hotels and go to a family-friendly B&B or small inn. "Parents often worry about taking little kids to a B&B, imagining that all the other guests will be honeymooning couples," says Droolicious blogger Lisa Mulcahy, who also runs the Waterstone Inn in Greenwood Lake, NY. "It’s not true." Since most B&B owners have their own kids (or grandkids), they often have unexpected extras like kid-sized ice skates or a spare Pack-N-Play. And since an inn is more like a house, it’s easier to put the little one down for a nap, then hang out on the porch or in the living room — just like at home.
Do you have toddler travel tips of your own? Leave them in Feedback!
©2009 Babble
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