kids travel journals Archives | Little Aussie Travellers

The Best Travel Gifts For Kids & Teens

by Loreena Walsh | Australian Travel News, Family Travel, Featured Posts, Gear Guide

There is so much excitement for kids who are heading off to travel, and often friends and family want to buy farewell gifts for kids or their parents to send them off. What many people don’t realise though, is that space is really limited for travelling families, and weight is also a constant juggle – there’s only so much that is legally able to be carried, so buying thoughtful gifts is really lovely, but we’ve got some great tips and ideas for the best travel gifts for kids or families who are about to head off on their trip around Australia.

I’ve decided to update this post for 2019, as now our children are older, things have changed. A lot. Both of my teenagers are now well into skincare & makeup for example, so something for my daughter like a gorgeous Beauty Advent Calendar would be practical and fun. So would I recommend the same gifts for travelling kids as I did when the kids were smaller? Some of them, but there are some other ideas I think are great options, so I’ve added a few more.

1. Fidget Toys For Kids

We all know there are long car rides, and hours of down time when we’re out on the road travelling, so figet toys are the perfect solution to keep kids occupied.

Fidget toys are generally small, compact and easy to take on the road without taking up too much of your valuable packing space. Brands such as Tangle fidget toys and Speks fidget and manipulative toys for children and adults are such a great solution.

If you haven’t looked at these types of toys for kids, they’re a great option for packing small and light and still having fun activities on the road.

2. Buy A Great Travel Journal for Kids or Adults.

This is still one of the best travelling gifts for kids. It’s actually the perfect travel gift idea for the entire family!.

It doesn’t matter if it’s Mum and Dad, or for the kids; travel journals are the perfect way for travellers to capture all the treasured moments on their journey. From destinations that are loved, to special experiences, drawing pictures, writing stories, sticking postcards, dried leaves, dried flowers, adding photographs. Journals help to create a timeless keepsake that will be a treasured family item for many, many years to come.

One thing I realise about travel, is that while you’re there, in the action, soaking up the landscapes, the conversations, the ever-changing destinations, that you never think you’ll forget. There are parts of our trip that I can barely remember, but having a journal to look back on has ensured that I can re-live the moment, and it’s such a fabulous glimmer of joy reading and remembering the little things that happened along the way that were special to us!

3. Travel-Friendly Art & Craft Supplies.

Whether it’s to write in their journal, help with their schoolwork or send letters and pictures back home to friends and family, travelling kids will love art and craft supplies to take along with them. Watercolour paints are a great option as they aren’t as messy as other paint options and don’t take much to clean up.

Pencils and pens are perfect for writing, drawing and colouring, as are notebooks and writing paper, both of which will come in handy for keeping kids occupied on long journeys and if they want to jot down notes or create artwork to represent their travels.

For our children’s travel journals we began with an A5 folder, with loose inserts from Office Works. That way they could move pages around, add photos once we’d had them printed, brochures, keepsakes, and remove a page if they felt like they didn’t want to include it any more. They also used their art and craft supplies to send special pictures and letters home to family and friends. The gift of stamps is also a great idea if you’d like to receive a postcard from your little adventurers!

4. Binoculars Make Great Travel Gifts for Kids.

Binoculars are a great gift idea for kids who are travelling. The ability to spot things at a long distance will help kids feel immersed in their surroundings and see things they won’t otherwise be able to spot. Wildlife, interesting scenery, they’ll love the faraway goodies they’ll spot through their new binoculars.

5. Compact & Multi-use Toy Ideas for Travelling Kids

One of the basic toys we considered a must-have when we hit the road was Lego. Not only is it a great toy for building things like we all know, it’s also a wonderful tool for learning maths too! Lego is great for solo play or group play and suitable for kids (and adults) of all ages. Other great ideas include block games like Jenga, the blocks for this game can not only be used to play but also double as building blocks or math blocks too. Marbles, decks of cards, Uno, travel versions of games like scrabble and battleship are all available too. Look for games and toys that are compact or can be taken out of their bulky boxes and easily stored.

6. Tech Gifts for Travelling Families

Depending on the ages of the children, cameras and other tech gadgets can work really well. For cameras, polaroids work well for adding scenic photos or selfies into travel journals, but digital cameras work well for capturing lots of photos and deciding what to print later. Expensive cameras aren’t necessary, just look for something of reasonable quality and the kids will love it. Cameras that are shock proof and waterproof would definitely be an ideal, although more expensive option. Ipods and Ipads are also a much loved travel gadget, as are iTunes gift cards a loved gift for kids who own these devices.

7. Everyday Necessities Especially For Older Children and Teens.

As I mentioned above, now are children are older, I reflect on the things that would make sense for tweens and teens to be gifted for travel. Personal care items are a wonderful gift idea for older kids. I mentioned Beauty Advent Calendars, and my daughter would absolutely adore a gift like this both when we were travelling or now we’re settled down. The bonus is that the items inside are compact in size and great for travelling.

For my son, who now shaves, shave gear, spare razors, cologne, all of this can be expensive to buy on the road in more remote places, so a little gift basket of goodies would be a fabulous idea.

Of course no matter what, gifts that come from the heart are always welcome by any family. When it comes to travel gifts for kids, If you think about items that kids can use, are small, compact and won’t just take up space, you’ll have happy kids and happy parents, and most importantly, happy, smiling travellers!

What about other special events like Mother’s Day gifting, Father’s Day gifting or even Christmas gift ideas for living on the road? We’ll cover those in another post soon.

Learning Opportunities for Kids on Road Trips

by Loreena Walsh | Education, Family Travel

Family road trips are lots of fun, and what makes them even better for parents, is that it’s easy to incorporate an educational perspective into holiday travel, that allows children to learn and experience the world first hand without realising they are learning a thing!

Introducing Education Into Family Road Trips

1. Road Trip Travel Journals

Travel journals offer lots of fun and artistic opportunity for kids, and secretly they offer lots of learning possibilities too! Don’t feel that travel journals are limited to older children, road tripping kids of any age generally love to draw, write or share their own insights into their holiday moments. It’ helps to relieve boredom and allow them to create great holiday memories and express themselves. While there are commercial options available, it’s easy to put together your own travel journal pack. To keep things simple, our tips for creating a travel journal for your kids are:

Hardcover note books from the newsagency or supermarket work well for DIY Travel Journals. An A5 size is portable and a great size to have in the car.
Supply stickers or other decorations so that the kids can decorate their journal before leaving home, this will ensure they look forward to using the journal once on holidays.
Allow creative expression. Encourage certain information to be recorded in the journal but don’t make any rules.

Ideas for travel journal content for your kids:

Draw pictures of places, buildings, attractions, wildlife, anything they see
Draw maps of places you visit, places you stay, even your holiday accomodation.
Leave blank pages when they write about attractions etc so they can glue photos in when they get home.
Collect travel brochures and glue them in.
For older kids: Keep a daily journal of what they experience each day
Track Kilometres travelled each day along with times, fuel costs etc.
Anything else that may be of interest to your child depending on their age.
Pack a “journal kit” for the kids to use including scissors, pencils, glue etc

2. Track your travels on a map.

This is a really fun thing to do with children of all ages. Get a suitable map that shows both your home and your road trip destinations. Before you leave home, place a marker on your home town/city then, depending on the age of your children, help them to plot your travels on the map, or allow them to do it. You can either do this as a family, or give the kids a map of their own. You don’t need to buy expensive maps for this, you can simply print a map out from the internet before you leave.

After or during your trip, for older children, this gives them to opportunity to research distances between towns etc. It’s also great for them to plot departure/arrival times, stop times and locations and fuel expenses. By turning this into a fun adventurous exercise this helps your child learn a whole range of life skills and mathematical skills without it being boring and mundane.

3. Give your children a camera or video camera to use.

When children get the chance to capture their own childrens holiday photos, amazing things can happen. Unlike adults, children aren’t always focused on the photos they are supposed to take, and generally, happily snap away to capture the world as they see it. Children see things differently not only because of their height, but also because of their different view on people and the world. Digital photography makes it inexpensive for children to snap photos happily without incurring the expense of photo printing.

To create the best educational opportunity, allow your kids to print their photos and add them to their travel journal. Talk with them about why they took certain photos, what they experienced and their favourite parts of the holiday. This helps with their communication skills.

These ideas are just a few simple ones of how you can create educational, yet fun opportunities on your next Aussie family road trip. Of course researching places, people, animals etc that they have seen is a great way to broaden their knowledge and even if they don’t write it down, talking about it as a family is lots of fun and sometimes we underestimate the power of a simple conversation with our children and what they can learn from it.

Don’t be afraid to try things like journals and modify ideas to suit your family and travel style. Regardless, you’re sure to create a lovely keepsake that will be looked back on in years to come. Do you have any travel tips you’d like to share, please do!