We love to travel, but one thing that can cause lots of stress is what to pack in our kids’ carry on bags. Here is what I have decided works for our family for our kids carry on bags. This makes the bags not too heavy, so my kids can carry them themselves.
Related: 15 Travel Items That Are NOT Essential
- 1 Medium stuffy
This means the stuffed animal or doll cannot be larger than 15 inches from top to bottom. My oldest daughter will bring her piggy, my next will bring her baby doll, and my son struggles with this because he wants to bring his huge teddy bear or his unicorn and giraffe because they are friends. I think it has been decided that my older daughter will share her small stuffed bunny with him for our trip.
- Water bottle
I don’t want to share all of my water and be dying of thirst, so they each are required to bring their own water bottle. I like to fill it with ice before we go to the airport and fill it with water once we get through security.
- Headphones
Headphones make sure that our kids are able to listen to their music or shows on the plane. We have ones that daisy chain together, so they can all listen to the same thing at the same time.
- Tablet
We have iPad mini’s for each of our kids in a kid safe case. I personally do not like Amazon fire tablets and I love the parental controls on iPads. During travel we allow lots of screen time. Outside of travel they spend maybe 2 hours a week on the tablets.
- Book
We allow our kids to bring a book or two to entertain themselves. On our last trip, my son decided to bring the biggest book he had for this trip, which caused a bit of an issue for making him carry his own backpack, especially after he got sunburnt.
- Boogie boards
Each of our kids have a boogie board for drawing and erasing.
- Clipboard or sketchpad/Barbie
Our son loves to color and draw. We make sure to bring a clipboard full of paper for him to draw and color with. My daughter loves Barbie’s and was allowed to bring one on our trip. The drawing items actually weren’t used much during travel, between the boogie boards and the i-pads drawing abilities, physical drawing items weren’t necessarily needed.
- Pencil pouch
Markers are out for us, but colored pencils are our choice for allowing our children to color. My son doesn’t like using crayons. we have a pouch to contain all the colored pencils on our trip.
- Snacks!
We pack all of the snacks. We actually use a toiletries bag to contain and organize them for our kids. Each kid has a hanging toiletries bag for their snacks.
- Handkerchief
My older daughter likes to use hers as a blanket for her stuffed animal. But it’s always good to have something to wipe your nose or use as a stuffed animal blanket.
