Travel Activities for Kids: Flights, Road Trips and Train Rides

Long trips with children go wrong in predictable ways: the snacks run out by the first motorway exit, the tablet dies over the sea, and someone kicks a seat for forty minutes. The good news is that most of it can be planned for. Here is what to pack by age, how to build a cheap printable travel pack, a stack of games that need nothing at all, and a screen plan you won't regret at the other end.

Pack by age, not by hope#

The classic mistake is packing what you wish your child would do (a thick novel, a detailed colouring book) instead of what they actually do in a confined seat for three hours. Think short, varied and quiet.

Two rules make a big difference. First, wrap or bag things separately so each one is a small surprise you can hand out when needed. Second, keep a few items back. If you hand over everything at the gate, you have nothing left for the hour when the flight is delayed.

Build a printable travel pack in twenty minutes#

A home-made travel pack costs almost nothing and is easier to manage than a bag of loose toys. You need a clipboard or a stiff folder, a zip pouch, and a stack of printed pages.

Our travel activity printables are sorted so you can pick quickly by age, and the Things That Go pack gives younger children a ready-made set of vehicle pages to colour, count and trace.

Games that need nothing at all#

These are worth memorising before you leave, because they rescue queues, delays and the bit after the battery dies. Most of them work across ages if you adjust the difficulty.

I spy, the travel edition. For little ones, use colours instead of letters: "I spy something red." For older children, add a rule that the thing must be outside the window, which keeps eyes up in a car. Printed I spy pages are a good backup for queues with nothing to look at.

The alphabet game. Find each letter of the alphabet, in order, on signs, number plates and shop fronts. Q and Z are the hard ones, and the whole car cheers when someone finds them. Younger children can play a version where they only hunt for the first letter of their name.

Twenty questions. One person thinks of an animal, an object or a person everyone knows. The others ask yes-or-no questions. A six-year-old's first questions are often "Is it a lion?", so model good ones: "Does it live in the sea? Is it bigger than a dog?" That's sorting and reasoning practice, quietly.

Story chain. One person starts: "Once there was a goat who wanted to fly a plane." Each person adds one sentence. Add a twist rule for older children: every third sentence must start with "Suddenly…"

Number-plate maths. Ages 7 and up can add the digits on the car in front ("4, 7 and 2 make 13"), find the biggest number they can make from them, or race to spot a plate whose digits add to 10. It's mental maths without anyone calling it that.

Would you rather. "Would you rather have a tail or wings?" Make children give a reason, and the game turns into a debate that can last a whole motorway.

Flights: managing the airport and the air#

Flying has its own rhythm: a long wait, a short burst of excitement, then hours of sitting still in a small space. Plan for each part separately.

At the airport, let children move. Walk the long way to the gate, find the windows where planes are visible and play "count the planes with blue tails". Movement before boarding buys stillness after.

Take-off and landing can be uncomfortable for ears. Swallowing helps the pressure even out, so time a drink, a bottle or a chewy snack for those moments. If your child has a cold or an ear problem, ask your doctor or pharmacist for advice before you fly.

In the air, use the tray table as a desk and the seat pocket as a drawer. Hand out one bag at a time. A good order is something active first (a sticker scene or a maze), then something calm (colouring, an audiobook), then a snack, then a screen block. Save one new thing for the descent, when the seatbelt sign goes on and everyone gets restless.

Night flights are a different game. Keep the activity bag short, dim the screen early, and treat a familiar bedtime routine (pyjamas, one story, the same soft toy) as the main event.

Road trips and train rides#

Cars and trains look similar on paper. They aren't. A train has a table, a toilet and space to stand up. A car has none of those, plus a driver who needs quiet.

In the car, the big issue is travel sickness. Looking down at a book or a worksheet in a moving car is a common trigger, and the NHS advice on motion sickness suggests looking at a fixed point such as the horizon and avoiding reading while moving. For a child who feels sick, swap paper for ears-and-eyes activities: audio stories, singing, the alphabet game and spotting games. Save the printable pack for stops.

Plan the stops, too. A two-hour driving block with a fifteen-minute stop is a sensible rhythm for most young children. A five-minute run around a car park is not glamorous, but it works.

On a train, paper activities come into their own. Spread the travel pack across the table, play cards, draw the view. Children aged 8–12 can track the route on a printed map and tick off each station, which also answers the "are we nearly there?" question before it's asked.

Screens on long trips, handled sensibly#

Most families use screens on long trips, and pretending otherwise helps nobody. The goal is not zero screen time. It is screen time that doesn't end in a meltdown when it stops.

• Download everything before you leave. Wi-fi on planes and trains is patchy, and a child who can't load their programme is worse than a child who never had it.
• Use children's headphones with a volume limit, and check they fit before the day you travel.
• Make blocks, not a drip. "You can watch two episodes after lunch" is easier to end than an open-ended tablet. Children find a clear finishing point easier than a sudden "that's enough".
• Give a warning before it ends. "One more episode, then we're doing the bingo sheet" softens the switch.
• Keep apps offline and familiar. On a trip, a child shouldn't be browsing, chatting or meeting new apps. Stick to downloaded films, audiobooks and games you've already checked.

For trips where you want to keep screens to a minimum, our post on screen-free activities has more ideas that travel well.

When it all goes wrong anyway#

At some point someone will be tired, hungry and fed up, and it may be you. A few things help more than any activity.

Check the basics first. Hunger, thirst, the toilet and tiredness explain most travel meltdowns. A snack fixes more problems than a new toy.

Shrink the task. "We have four hours left" is meaningless to a five-year-old. "After this episode and one snack, we'll be at the big bridge" is not.

Change the scenery. Swap seats, walk the aisle on a train or plane when it's allowed, or open a window in the car for a minute.

Lower the bar. If the plan was a quiet hour of puzzles and the reality is a child lying across two seats looking at the ceiling, that still counts as a peaceful hour.

Before your next trip, print one maze, one colouring page and one bingo sheet, and put them in a folder by the front door with two pencils. That small pack, plus three games you know by heart, covers more of the trip than you would expect. For quieter stretches on arrival, see our ideas for quiet time.