Traveling Screen-Free with Kids
- Summer Jarosky
- Mar 15
- 5 min read
Traveling with kids can be fun, but keeping them entertained on long drives or plane rides can be challenging! I find so often that people normalize traveling with a tablet to keep kids entertained. But I am here to tell you that it is possible to travel screen-free with kids. I have 3 young boys and have been traveling with them since my youngest was just a few weeks old. We even spent a year living and traveling around Costa Rica.
Whether we're at home or on the road, we seldom use screens. Here are some of my favorite tips and tricks for keeping your little ones entertained screen-free during travel.
Audiobooks and Podcasts
Audiobooks make traveling screen-free with kids so much easier! We love our Yoto Player, which is a kid-friendly audiobook player that is super easy for kids to utilize on their own. You can purchase different cards or pick from 100's of free podcasts. When we travel, my boys load up their Yoto card book (which is just a cheap business card book) with their favorite cards. We also load the "make your card" with their favorite podcasts.
Don't have a Yoto player? No worries, you can get audiobooks on Audible.com, Spotify, and even through your local library.
If you are traveling by plane, you will want to bring a pair of kids' headphones. Yoto makes their own headphones, but we like these because you can link two of them together.
My Clipboard Trick
Whether in the car, train or airplane, I LOVE bringing a clipboard along. I usually bring one for each of my kids so they can decorate and add stickers to customize it. It is a great way to attach a coloring book or sheets of paper or use as a table in a car seat/plane seats.
I especially like the clipboards like this one as they take up less space in a backpack.
Snacks, snacks, and more snacks
Snacks, snacks, and more snacks. Food not only keeps everyone happy and in a good mood, but snacks can also act as a fun activity or take up time. I like to fill a small plastic tackle box with snacks, we call them snackleboxes. I usually get mine at the dollar store, but here is a similar one.
I love packing my kids snack boxes whenever we go on a longer car ride or on the plane. And I would highly recommend bringing extra food in another container to fill the box multiple times over the flight or car ride. You can even include the kids in filling their own snack boxes.
Other snack ideas that can also be a fun activity:
Use pipe cleaners and Cheerios or Fruit Loops to practice fine motor skills. Pipe cleaners can be used for SO MUCH.
Trail mix
Pealing oranges and bananas
Lollypops (for take off and landing and equalizing young children's ears).
Click here to read my blog post about easy snacks and meals for outdoor adventures.
Stickers & Painter Tape
I always pack stickers for longer trips. Stickers can be a super fun and easy activity. Whether it is decorating their body, their clipboards, or the back of the seat ( taking stickers off can be an activity, too), or you could get a reusable sticker book for them to interact with. Reusable stickers or window clings can also provide hours of fun in either a car or an airplane.
Painters' tape is also an easy thing to bring along for a variety of reasons. You can tape toys or items to their clipboard, window, or airplane seat back tray and have your kids rescue the toys. Painters' tape is also useful for taping a blanket over the window to add extra shade or at your final destination to cover outlets for babyproofing.
Nat Geo Sticker Animal book (for older kids)
Colorful Painters Tape
Bring books they can read on their own.
I love bringing books along on a car or plane ride, they are also great to have when you get to your final destination. Some of our favorite books to travel with are books that my kids can look at by themselves, so that may be board books with flaps and touch and feel pages. My older kids love the seek-and-find books or books on animal facts or with interesting pictures.
Here are a few of our favorite books:
The other bonus about bringing books along is that you then have them at your final destination, so don't forget that favorite bedtime story.
Travel at the right time, if you can.
It's not always in your control, but a long car ride can seem much shorter if you plan it right; the same goes for a long flight.
These are some tips I follow when going on a long drive.
With kids that still nap, I like to get in the car around 30-60 minutes before their nap. This way, you only need to entertain them for that period before they fall asleep.
When possible, travel around bedtime, put everyone in pajamas, and talk about how exciting it will be to wake up in a new place.
When you need to go to the bathroom, try to find a place where you can get out and run around.
For flights, I usually pick flights with layovers over direct flights. Breaking up a long flight into one or two legs can help with kids going stir crazy on the plane.
Places to get energy out.
Someone once shared a brilliant piece of advice when going on a road trip, and that was to skip the rest stop and find a local library along your route. So often, public libraries have kids play areas, clean bathrooms, and a drinking fountain to fill up water bottles. Beats a boring highway rest stop. Local playgrounds are another great place to stop; many of them will have a public restroom nearby.
In the airport, kids' play areas are becoming more and more common. But they are not always easy to find, so ask at your gate. Even our tiny airport in Madison, WI, now has one. And don't overlook using an airplane bathroom and the mirror to get some wiggles out.
Pack small toys or a game Set.
Depending on your child, packing a variety of small compact toys can be helpful. I like to pack toys that my kids haven't played with for a while or are new, so they are excited about them.
These toys can be as simple as a monster truck, playdough, activity cube (in picture below), small figurines, a deck of cards, a small stuffed animal, or magnetic checkers.
It's okay to be bored.
Sometimes, we feel the need to always keep our kids entertained. However, boredom is when kids find fun things to look at out of the window, make friends with the person in the row behind them, or come up with their own games.
I hope that these tips and tricks will help you limit screentime the next time you travel. I promise that the more you travel screen-free with your kids, the easier it will get. I hope that by mixing and matching these ideas above, you’ll keep the kids entertained and avoid the need for screens during your travels.
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