- Guest Blog Post by Janet from Middle Aged Mama
We spent six months caravanning around Australia when our children were 4 and 7 (now 22 and 25 – how time flies!), and it was the adventure of a lifetime.
Between sightseeing and school work our days were quite busy – but how did we cope when the rain set in, or keep the kids amused during quiet times in the van?
With such limited space, it can be a challenge working out what toys and other entertainment to pack for your children, so here are our tried and true recommendations:
- Make sure you pack your child’s favourite bedtime companion; this ensures a good night’s sleep for the whole family!
- We developed a “creation box” with drawers, which we filled with felt pens, crayons, pencils, sticky tape, glue and the like. We gave each of our kids an exercise book to use for their drawings – it is now a precious keepsake of our holiday, and is tidier than odd sheets of paper which seem to litter the van in no time.
- Your family may also enjoy creating a souvenir scrapbook. The children can paste in tickets, postcards, leaves, photos, feathers and other mementos.
- Building blocks or other construction kits are another good idea. It doesn’t have to be the whole kit and caboodle from home, just enough. We invested in a couple of small kits especially for our trip and the variations produced were endless.
- At the time of our holiday, beading was extremely popular and our two kids were hooked! While it may not be as fashionable today, it’s still possible to pick up kits or supplies cheaply at bargain stores.
- Life on the road is an excellent opportunity to introduce your children to board games, if you haven’t already. Our seven-year-old really took to chess and especially enjoyed thrashing his mum at ‘suicide chess’ (where the object of the game is to lose all your pieces first, excepting the king). Our daughter preferred Pass the Pigs, and Snakes and Ladders.
We kept items like blocks or beads in lunch boxes, while other toys were stored in a backpack. It kept things neat and made it easier to enforce the rule “Clean up one mess before you start another” – which is even more important when you are living in a small space like caravan.
Speaking of cleaning up, our trip was also a great opportunity to teach our children some basic life skills. With no dishwasher, for example, the children learned to wash and wipe up the old-fashioned way!
One of the joy of camping and caravanning is that you’ll have time to sit down and colour or bead or build with your children. You’ll be surprised at how much fun you’ll have, and the kids will be ecstatic – you’ll quickly realise that no matter where you might be in the world, their favourite amusement is playing with you!
Kind Regards
Janet Camilleri
Bio: When Janet Camilleri was growing up, her mother told her to become a teacher as “you can’t make a living from writing”. It might have taken a few decades, but Janet has proved her mother wrong! Now a fulltime copywriter, Janet blogs in her spare time as the “Middle Aged Mama” as she learns to fashion a new life now that her kids are grown.