Long trips with children are not a problem to solve — they are a logistics challenge to prepare for. The difference between a manageable long journey and a genuinely difficult one often comes down to what you have in the bag when attention runs out forty minutes in.
This is a practical guide to building a travel activity kit that actually works — drawn from experience with what holds children's attention across different ages and journey types, and what tends to fail under the conditions of real travel.
Physical activity books have a fundamental problem for travel: when they run out, they run out. A child who finishes all the mazes in a printed activity book on the outbound journey has no activity book for the return. Purchasing a second copy at an airport or destination typically means a different book at a significantly higher price.
Printable PDF activity books solve this completely. Before departure, you print exactly as many pages as you think you will need — and then print several more. The standard recommendation is to print twice as many activity pages as you think the journey requires. Children move through pages faster when confined and less distracted than they do at home, and the cost of having extra pages is negligible.
Whatever you think you need for the trip, print twice as many pages. The cost of a few extra sheets is nothing compared to the cost of running out mid-flight over the Pacific.
Not all activities work equally well under travel conditions. Car seats, airline tray tables, and confined spaces create practical constraints that affect which activities children can actually complete. Here is a hierarchy based on what works best under real travel conditions.
Works in any position. Coloured pencils roll less than felt-tips. Produces 20–40 minutes of focused engagement per page for ages 4–8.
High focus requirement means less restlessness. A single good maze can hold a 6-year-old for 15–20 minutes. Print several at different difficulty levels.
"Draw the aeroplane captain" or "draw what you can see out the window" — open-ended prompts work especially well during actual travel because the environment provides material.
Works well in tight spaces. Requires only a pencil. Ages 4–7 find these satisfying — the reveal at the end creates genuine excitement.
Word searches and crosswords require concentration that's harder to maintain with ambient noise and movement. They work well for older children (9+) but produce frustration in the 5–8 range. Sticker books are good but the stickers inevitably end up somewhere they shouldn't be on a plane. Cutting activities are a security risk and a practical nightmare in any confined space.
This sounds minor but it is not. On planes, the tray table works for colouring but only if the child stays fully upright. In cars, a child seat means no flat surface at all without a clipboard. A small, lightweight clipboard — the kind with a rubber band to hold pages in place — transforms the practical usability of activity books in confined spaces. Pack one per child.
"A clipboard turns a loose pile of activity pages into a proper working surface. It is the most underrated piece of the travel activity kit."
Do not show children their full activity kit at the start of the journey. Start with one colouring page and one pencil. When that is done, produce a maze. When attention drops, introduce a drawing prompt. Stagger the revelation of new activities throughout the journey rather than presenting everything at once, which leads to rapid cycling through options and faster boredom.
This is the same principle as managed variety at home, but it matters even more under travel conditions where there is genuinely nothing else available.
Printable activity books are the best travel activity solution available — not because they are superior in every respect, but because the unlimited print advantage solves the core problem of travel: you can never have too many, and running out mid-journey is genuinely avoidable.
Printable activity books for ages 3–12. Mazes, colouring, drawing prompts and more. Buy once, print as many pages as every journey needs.
Browse activity books →