Make Travelling With Children Easier - Our 18 Favourite Travel Toys, A

3 min read

If you're starting to plan travel with your children again, this post will help!

Below is our favourite travel activities, toys, and printables.

Download our 3 Favourite Travel Printables

Travel printables are great because they take up almost no room. You can print a handful so they're ready whenever you need them.

Road trip Scavenger Hunt
Airport Scavenger Hunt
Colour Hunt - look for something in every colour on the colour hunt page (this one is useful for so many things, you could print out 10 of them, just to have them handy)

15 Small, Portable Toys and Activities

1. Stereognostic Bag - this activity is endlessly entertaining and you can do it over and over with different items, making it new again. TOOBs are a great addition to Stereognostic Bags. Go here to find out how to prep this activity > https://themontessoriroom.com/blogs/montessori-tips/my-favourite-on-the-go-montessori-activity

2. Dot Markers- print our free dot marker printables to go with them for a quiet, focused activity.

3. Carry-along Sketchbooks - with crayons for mess-free, open-ended art exploration. For older children, you can work together to draw new things you see on the trip.

4. Stickers - Stickers are so great for tons of activities, like:⁣
⁣

Add to dot printables (find a bunch of free dot printables in the Montessori Printables section of our site)⁣
Stick them to the outline of letters, numbers, or shapes to practice recognition ⁣
Use them for counting (draw a number and have the child add the correct number of stickers to that box⁣
Cut up the sticker sheets and add them to plastic Easter Eggs for year round egg hunts⁣
Use them to decorate and personalize art projects, like rain sticks.⁣

5. Lacing cards (or the mouse and cheese for smaller children) - these are so light, thin, and quiet, they're one of the best travel activities. For older children, you could bring large buttons for your child to "sew" onto the cards.

6. Magnet Toys - Magnetic board toys are so great for travel because you don't have to worry about the pieces falling all over the place.

7. TOOBs - these small, portable toys are great for children going through the sensitive period for small objects (up to ~4 years old) who love to fiddle and play with little items. They all come with matching nomenclature cards so you can play matching or memory games with these sets too.

8. Plus Plus- these are perfect travel toy. They're light and so portable with unlimited options for play. I always have a small bag in my backpack for on the go.

Note: there's small and large Plus Plus, with the large being suitable for 1+.

9. Beads - beads are a great, focused activity and they're so small and light.

Here's our favourite sets:

10. Sensory Tubes - You can prep these ahead of time, using them to make calming sensory bottles or fill them with interesting small objects, like items in nature, or fill them with coloured rice and small objects that they have to rotate the bottle around to find.

11. Walter Wooden Activity Board for Infant- this activity board is the perfect size for travel, with many different sounds, colours and moving pieces to explore. The velcro straps on the side also allow you to attach it to different structures.

12. Magnetiles - these don’t up take up much room if you add them to a large ziplock. There's tons of imaginative play options and the fact they're magnetic means they're less likely to spill all over.

13. Dentist or Doctor’s Kit - both come in travel cases that can be thrown in a backpack. There's a bunch of small items that are great for imaginative play.

14. Wooden Peg People - when you're really tight on space, it's great to add bring open-ended toys that can be used for lots of different imaginary play. Peg people are perfect for that. Plus, they're small and each set comes in a canvas bag for storage.