Travel Tech Gadgets: travel with kids

Showing posts with label travel with kids. Show all posts

Jun 6, 2016

13 Tips For Safe Summer Road Trips With Kids

Family Travel Safety Tips and Gadgets

2016 is shaping up to be the summer of the road trip
Cheap fuel prices, and with summertime gas prices predicted to be the lowest in 13 years, families have more spare change to spend on their trip. 90% of Memorial Day travelers are planning to go by car according to AAA.

Image: Newsroom.AAA.com

Safety

• Traveling during the warm weather months, give yourself an extra five to ten minutes to get the car cool before putting the kids inside. It can be miserable and also dangerous in a hot vehicle. Plus this will get you off on a better start to your trip.

• Make sure the kids have all the snacks and drinks they need

Kids Play Tray for Snacks Great for Car Bus Train and Plane Journeys

Cozy Greens® Backseat Car Organizer - Must Have For Traveling With Kids

High Road Kids Food 'n Fun Car Seat Organizer with Cooler and Snack Tray

• Make sure that you have the directions to your destination set up on your GPS

Google Maps App (iTunes/Google Play)

How To: Use Google Maps Offline When Traveling

Waze - GPS, Maps & Traffic (Google Play/iTunes)

Garmin nüvi GPS

• Place your sunglasses and glasses by you/driver

Driver’s See Through Sun Visor that blocks glare from the sun and oncoming traffic could be a good idea in addition to glasses.

• Take out (if not already) electronic toll collection device, such E-Z Pass, and mount onto the windshield

• Phone charger is plugged in and ready to charge phone that is put away into a cupholder

• Or if you are using it as GPS or handsfree calling, make sure that the phone mount is securely in place
We have used on many road trips and love the iOttie Easy One Touch Car Mount

• Answering the phone on the road is not a safe option. Best, if you do have to, is to use Bluetooth for hands-free system

Related articles:
Family Trip to DR - What To Pack
Aruba Vacation - Kids Gadgets and Accessories
How to Get Your Phone and Tablet Travel Ready
Summer Family Trip to Norwalk CT
more tips for summer road trip below

Entertainment

• Keep the backseat passengers busy and enjoying the ride

Travel-Themed kids packs that include 20-page activity booklet, fun souvenirs to review, flashlight adventures, trading cards, stickers and luggage tags. These will keep them busy for awhile.

• Play movies and shows

collee Universal Car Back Seat Headrest Mount Tablet Holder

Best way to watch movies in the car is with a mount that would hold the iPad or other tablet in place, hands-free, and away from kids' faces. Giving them a better view and also some distance from the screen.

• Listen to music

iPod Nano these days is under $100 and has 16GB of storage which can hold around up to 30 hours of music. More than enough for most road trips.

Apple iPod nano 16GB

• Share the sound

Better yet, the backseat passengers can share the music, as long as they agree on the genre, for duration of the ride without needing an extra MP3 player. A headphone jack splitter will allow multiple users to plug into the same device and listen to the tunes

Belkin Rockstar Multi Headphone Splitter

• Charge All Your Gadgets

Using the car's cigarette lighter, or better name would be an electrical port since we never use it for that, you can charge your gadgets with the USB chargers specifically designed to fit there. We currently have the Griffin dual USB charger in the front. It has been plugged in there for 3+ years. The latest gadget for charging your devices in the car is the Belkin Road Rockstar with 4 USB Ports. Not only does it have the same USB plug for the electrical port, but it also has an extension that is pulled through to the backseat and 2 other devices can be plugged in. The secondary portion has 2.4A ports that can charge tablets.

Extra

• The Best Part of Road Trips is…

• Water Safety Tips for Kids

Sound-off: What do you think? Let us know below

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Nov 9, 2015

Aruba Vacation - Kids Gadgets and Accessories

This was our kid's first long trip as mentioned in the first post of the series (Aruba - First Family Trip South - Summer Continued). Overall, the trip was a success. So much so that we just booked our next one that will be in the start of the new year.
In packing for the trip, her luggage space outweighed both of ours. Besides clothes and shoes, she also was bringing toys, food, drinks, carriage, and multitude of gadgets to keep her entertained.

Backpack with a leash
Not only did this little pack contain all of the goodies that would be easily accessible to her during the flight, it came in very handy at the airport as well. It also helped that she liked wearing it. Quite a difference from the animal version we originally got. This one had very stiff straps and they were rubbing and hurting her. Brica By-my-side Safety Harness Backpack has soft padded straps, comfy and breathable design and is light.

Inside the backpack there was
- light up ball with unique shape that prevents it from rolling away
- small travel books
- kids camera that shows different image upon click
- stuffed animal
- and washable crayons

Refresh-a-Baby Water Bottle Adapter
Easily replaceable tops for bottles. Genius. Instead of bringing with us multiple baby bottles from which our kiddo still drinks milk, that take up a lot of space within the bags, we brought these small packable tops. They can fit on just about any plastic bottle that we might buy anyhow to drink water. And we would be able to recycle it instead of tossing out by pouring milk in there and for kid to able to sip at their own pace from it.

Drawing Travel Board

Fisher-Price Travel Doodler Pro

Headphones

After seeing reviews on multiple kid travel blogs and reading through reviews on amazon.com, we got her the Kidz Gear Wired Headphones. These are very light, and comfortable on the head. As you can see I tried them on too. They are easily adjustable to quite a few head sizes. They also come with a chord that can limit the maximum value to safeguard toddlers ears. They had great sound. Much better than the cheap earbuds or the ones offered (sold) on the plane.

Sunglasses

Water bottle
Stephen Joseph Owl Stainless Steel Water Bottle - This water bottle is made for toddler. Gives them independence to drink by themselves. They can imitate adults when drinking from a bottle. And it has a top that closes completely to prevent spills in addition to the cap that keeps it clean.

Rash guard shirts
Kiddo was swimming in these almost the entire time. They kept her protected from the direct sunlight since they have 100% UV protection. The shirts also kept her warm on the beach since they dried quickly. It also meant putting on less sunscreen as not as much of her skin was exposed while we swam or played on the beach.

Water/beach shoes
While we wore ours only in the water to be able to walk on the ocean floor covered with rocks, she wore hers on the beach to keep her feet safe from various shells, rocks, and other things in the sand.

Phone preloaded with cartoons and games
Before leaving on vacation, we preloaded our phone with several gigabytes of cartoons and educational games and videos. It was a life and sanity saver during eating out and other times of toddler hysterics. During the stay we did not have WiFi and did not take the phone off of airplane mode as to not incur any roaming charges. We still were able to use it for entertainment as well as a notebook.

Phone holder
This little accessory was irreplaceable while using the phone at meals and we were very glad we took it with us. The phone stayed off the table in the right position for viewing and accessing controls. The holder folds up flat and is very light to just throw in our bag with all the rest of the stuff.

Sand Toys

Two buckets filled with sand toys were the unexpected, yet very helpful, babysitter on the beach. Once out of the water, the kiddo would play with them for at least half hour if not more. This gave us some time to arrange beach accessories, sit back, relax and sometimes even read our Kindles.

Sound-off: How do you travel with your kids? And what essentials do you bring along? Let us know below

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