SNACKS
First of all, make sure you bring enough food and drinks with you. Bored children will want to eat. And eat, and eat. Here are some ideas for healthy snacks : grapes, baby carrots, hard boiled eggs, sandwiches, dried fruit (raisins, cranberries, dried mango slices, etc), cherry tomatoes, bananas, raspberries, etc...
It's always a good idea to bring a snack-bag for each child so you don't have to worry about who gets what.
MUSIC
So here's the thing: you don't have to listen to the same children's music for hours and hours over and over again. Try to load up your phone or Ipad and get headphones for your little ones, so they stay quiet and busy on their own... for a while at least ;)
If they need some more interaction and you're up for it, a great idea is singing songs with them. Time will fly by and you'll all have a fun time together!
GAMES AND ACTIVITIES
There's plenty of travel-sized coloring books or activity books you can easily bring along and your children will have fun with. Do you know (or better: do you remember) some of these great classic "on-the-road-games":
- Name game: You say “Jeff,” the next person must quickly say a name that starts with the last letter of the previous name, like maybe Francine. Another variation is names of food or countries or cities... whatever you come up with!
- Quiet game: however can't stay quiet loses. Perfect for the last couple of kilometers when everybody's going crazy ;)
- Yellow car: try to find a yellow car and when you see one, say "banana!" or "cheese on wheels!". This counts as one point for whoever spotted the yellow car first. (variations on this one could be; name or model of car)
Voilá! We hope to see you soon in Barcelona and with our help, you'll soon get some "kids-free" time to recover from the long trip! ENJOY!
Barcelona Babysitter team
