What to Actually Put in the Travel Bag
Several small things, handed out one at a time. That single rule matters more than anything you put in it.
How to pack an activity bag for a journey with young children: small items rationed one at a time, a mix of quiet and fiddly, and what to hold back for delays.
The short version
- One thing at a time. This matters more than the contents.
- Hard backing for anything to be drawn on.
- One new thing, wrapped, held back for the delay.
- Nothing that rolls, and nothing you would mind losing.
- Age
- Ages 2–8
The most useful thing about a travel bag is not what is in it. It is that the contents come out one at a time.
Given everything at once, a child will look at all of it in eleven minutes and then be bored with all of it for the remaining three hours. Given one thing every forty minutes, the same bag lasts the journey. It feels mean and it is the single most effective trick there is.
What goes in it, roughly:
Something fiddly. A wind-up toy, a small puzzle, a length of string, a bulldog clip. Things that need hands stay interesting longer than things that need watching.
Something to draw with, and something to draw on that has a hard back. Loose paper on a lap is a disaster; a small clipboard or a notebook is not.
Stickers. More than you think. Stickers are the single highest-value item per gram in any travel bag, and a sticker book will outlast almost anything else.
Something entirely new, wrapped. It does not have to be expensive — a pound-shop torch, wrapped in newspaper, buys twenty minutes including the unwrapping.
Snacks that are not a treat and take a while to eat. Raisins one at a time beat a chocolate bar in every respect.
And one thing held back, unopened, for the delay. There is nearly always a delay, and having something genuinely new at the worst moment is worth more than anything you used in hour one.
Leave out anything with small pieces that roll, anything that only works on a flat surface, and anything you would mind losing. All three will end up on the floor of a train.
Screens are fine. A four-hour journey is exactly what a tablet is for, and the rest of this list is for the hours around it — not instead of it.