Things to take on holiday with 4 y/o

[MistySkiesAreGone]

I'm going on a hot holiday with a friend who is recently bereaved and their 4 y/o. I wanted to take some extra activities for him in my case - any ideas for things you took away that worked? TIA X

You can get small lego sets in Tesco, we have a travel Guess Who game and simple card type games. Colouring books with pens or stampers are good. Sticker books also went down well with my son, he also loved dressing up, so I got him some cheap stuff to wear. My other son loved books, he would be happy just being read to and looking at pictures.

Also comics don’t take up much room.

A plastic road mat and a few cars kept ds occupied for hours.
A seek and find picture book, eg 1001 things to find (you can get smaller versions)

Possibly depends on which end of 4yo (whether they can read two-digit numbers), but mine (nearly 5) is massively into dot to dots at the moment.

Blow up beach ball
uno cards
a CBeebies magazine (it has colouring and stickers and puzzles and stories. Major win.)

Ok! A magic painting mat! Water painting- we always took ours on holiday. Huge mat that folds small and has “paint brushes” that you dip in water and it makes temporary pictures on the mat - they disappear as it dries out.

You can get tape which looks like a road, DS loved that and it hardly takes up any room with a few small cars. The other enormously popular thing for DS was a small inflatable boat for the swimming pool, so that or something like a floating ring maybe.

Take a look at the website “keep em quiet” they do really good packs of age-appropriate activities which you can pop in your suitcase

Stickers and colouring. Some little toys for the pool. Bubble mixture (put in a plastic bag so it doesn’t leak). Happy families card game and go fish. Also if it’s hot get them a little hand held electric fan (the sort that stops when you touch it so it’s safe). Mine love them and torches too when we go away.