Great Travel Games to take on holiday

If you are about to go on holiday with kids then you need this article in your life! If you haven’t been here before you may not know that we have four kids currently aged 12 and under and we tend to go away for at least 3 weeks at a time so travel games to take on holiday are important to us and an something we know a lot about. All of the games we recommend below are games we actually own so read on to find out what the best travel games to take on holiday are – well what they are in our opinion!

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What is a travel game and why bother?

Typically travel games are smaller and lighter versions of existing games that you can easily pack and take with you on holiday. Of course you can take any games on holiday if you have the space, but packing a full size chess board or monopoly game in your bag isn’t hugely practical.

We have found that even on an action packed holiday with water parks and days out the kids still need some quieter times (and so do we!) and this is where the travel games come into play. So we always bring a selection of travel games that we can play in the evenings not least because it is a great way for the whole family to connect and do something together whilst staying away from screens as much as possible.

SUMMER ACTIVITY PACK FOR KIDS – NO SCREENS

The games to take on holiday that we are recommending here are a mix of games for the whole family, 2 player games and one player games.

Magnetic Travel Games

These are right up there with my favourite games to take on holiday as having a magnetic board and pieces mean that the kids are way less likely to lose half the pieces and I am way less likely to spend most of my holiday looking for them! I am all about making travelling with kids as easy as possible. These are our favourite ones and we have the draughts, chess, bingo, tic tac toe and hangman which are all fab two player games that the kids can occupy themselves with when they need a minute or can play with one of us as some 1:1 time.

These games are also great for taking to restaurants to occupy the kids during the times they are waiting for food etc… They don’t take up much room and they don’t make noise so they are perfect for busy environments where you don’t want to disturb others.

Card Games to take on holiday

Perhaps the easiest games to take on holiday are card games as they are so small. Our favourite include Dobble and Uno, but we have also recently been gifted two games by Kikkerland and these small trivia card games are so small that you could actually just pop them in your pocket!

Other card based games we love are Monopoly Deal which is a card version of the main game. It is very fast paced and is very different to the actual board game, but has the same principal of collecting property and is easy for the family to play together and travel with so it definitely makes the cut on our list of favourites.

Paper Based Games and Activities

Don’t underestimate the value of pen and paper when you are travelling and trying to keep kids entertained. Some interesting and easy to play games include Noughts and Crosses, Making the square and Hangman and as far as I am concerned travelling with kids, but without colouring and pens is just crazy!

I love these types of packs for road trip or travel by plane when there are long periods that kids need to be occupied for and cannot run around.

I have created a summer activity pack for my children to take with us when we go on holiday this summer and you can get your copy right here:

This summer activity pack is ideal for quiet time on holiday, getting the kids out of the sun during the hottest part of the day or just giving yourself a few minutes of sunbathing time whilst the kids are happily working through it.

Don’t miss it – we have a great sale on right now where you can save 25% and still get 85 pages of activities and game sheets for the kids

Word Games

If you have been visiting our site for a while you will know that one of our daughters is autistic and this impacts her working memory and communication skills so we are huge fans of word based games that encourage her to engage verbally and help to expand her vocabulary etc… They are also games that she really enjoys and there is nothing wrong, in my opinion, in all the kids getting involved in games that encourage and develop communication skills so here are our top 3 word games that are suitable for travel:

1. Gabble – this is a game played in teams (perfect for a family) where you try to describe items from various topics for your team mates to guess within a timed period. Topics include people, things, places, entertainment and animals and you also get scoring counters and an egg timer in the travel game box. The box itself also has press popper buttons for keeping score. The whole game is only around 10 x 9 cm so is an ideal size for taking on holiday. It is aimed at children aged 12 and over, but we have been able to play with our younger children as well as it is team based. We just adjust the length of time they get to describe and we also check that they understand what each of the items are on their card before they start each round. That way they are actually learning meaning as well so its a win win!
2. Bananagrams – super small and easy to take anywhere with only a 15 minute game time this one is an ideal holiday game and the best part is it is all about creating words so they are practicing spelling without even knowing it!

Story Cubes – this is perhaps my favourite game to play with my children as I love hearing the crazy stories that they can invent and it is just brilliant for helping my daughter work on her narrative communication as it gives a framework, but still allows fun. Story Cubes are basically small dice with images on that you roll and then build a story around. We go with the sillier the better to keep the fun going.