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Chapter 1: What are some common ways families keep children entertained while traveling?
It's that time of year when many families are using trains, planes and automobiles. Maybe some of them are using bicycles as well to get in a family break, whether that's at home or abroad. Ruth Roberts, co-owner of Cog Toys and Games, is with me in studio to take a look at how to keep children entertained on journeys and what to pack in the bags to make those holiday dinners out a little easier.
Ruth, thanks for coming in.
Thanks, David. Thanks for having me on.
OK, let's be honest. There will be tablets used by families. There will be phones used by families. Cartoons are going to be watched on the telly. And a little bit of that is fine. Everybody knows. But this is for when you want to press pause on the screen time.
Yes, absolutely. So I think as parents, we can put ourselves under a huge amount of pressure trying to entertain our kids on holidays. But we just have to remember it's not our job to entertain them for every second of the day. And as a mom of three, what I've learned is it's just handy to have three or four little activities or games that you have up your sleeve for when you need them.
Okay, and probably the easiest and the one that I'm sure every house would have, deck of cards.
A deck of cards. I own a toy shop and genuinely, if I could only take one thing on holidays, it would be a deck of cards. They are the ultimate travel toy. Really inexpensive, really small. You can play them anywhere. I can even play card games with children as young as three. I'm talking with Snap or Pears. So definitely a deck of cards is the ultimate travel game.
Okay, and there's lots of old school games that particularly if you might be travelling with grandparents, a lot of families will have three generations on the go. And there's lots of games that the grandparents can teach the kids.
Definitely. One my own kids absolutely love is Go Fish. And there's actually so many benefits to playing card games that I think we're kind of losing. Loads of cognitive benefits like problem solving, critical thinking, memory. And then you've also got the social benefits of card games like turn taking, being a good winner as well as a good loser.
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Chapter 2: What simple activities can parents have ready for road trips?
And as you turn the card over, if your card has a picture of what you've said, everyone is a face off to you, snap. So if I say taco and the card I turn over is a picture of a taco, everyone is in a face-off to snap and win the cards.
Okay, that sounds like a really good game, yeah. So, I mean, if you're travelling as a family unit, you might have a situation where the older children may not be interested in a game that's going to entertain the smallies. So is there anything that crosses the age ranges?
Yes, Dobble is a great one. So Dobble is one. So I have a toddler and then my eldest guy is eight. And that's definitely one they can play together because it's literally just a visual perception game. So it's a snap game where each of the cards have a matching symbol. And so really small kids will enjoy that just as much as the older ones.
OK, and the pair of them will keep each other entertained. And Mam can go off and do something more exciting.
For about 10 minutes.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Quizzes.
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Chapter 3: Why are card games considered the ultimate travel toys?
quizzes i love a good quiz and i find that like the quizzes are great for you know killing a bit of time when you're waiting for your meal in a restaurant or if a flight's been delayed and you can come up with those yourself chat gpt put in the ages of the people playing and maybe if they have a particular topic that they're interested in and you'll get some really good questions that will suit everyone that's playing
Okay, another good one on a car trip, on a road trip is license plates. We were in the States and we were trying to, our daughter was 10, I think at the time, and we were looking out for all 50 states. Didn't get them, but got pretty close. So that's, or you can do yellow car license plates.
Yeah, unless you've got two boys like me, seven and eight, that like to punch each other when they see a particular license plate set.
Okay, it was all going so well and they're just, yeah. But that's a good way to keep people entertained at a car trip. Now, art supplies, because the perennial colouring in a couple of crayons, whatever, that can really help, can't it?
Yeah, and if you're going on a flight, I would just say there's some handy ones that are totally mess free. So, you know, you're not expecting the cabin crew to kind of clean up, you know, mushed up crayons onto the floor. So one I really like is the water magic ones. So you've got a little colouring book and you have a pen that you fill with water.
And as you rub the pen over the page, the colour magically comes to life. That's a really, really good one for keeping kids entertained. And reusable sticker books, I cannot recommend enough.
Okay, there's lots of different sticker books. I mean, anytime I go into a toy shop, there's loads of them out there. Are some of them better than others?
I really like the Usborne ones. But, you know, they're all pretty good. You can get them for any theme. So no matter what your kid is interested in, there's one there for them.
And there's lots of other activities books, activity books, crosswords, Sudoku, presumably, word searches.
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