Easter entertainment tactics for two-year-olds

April 18, 2014

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It’s finally Easter. What’s everyone doing for the long weekend?

We’re escaping the building site to go on the train up to Sheffield (while our builder holidays in our bathroom, fingers crossed it’s finished soon).

When E was little, train travel was like an instant sandman, and she’d sleep for the whole journey. Which was bliss.

But now she’s older, there’s zero chance of napping as everything’s just. too. exciting. And can then get boring really quickly. So it’s a constant challenge to keep her entertained.

Here’s some tips for train travel with children, and a couple of tried and tested ideas on keeping small children busy:

1) Toddler tag team; sit 2:1. So of you is with them while the other gets a bit of a rest / sneaky chance to check your phone

2) Take them all the snacks in the world

3) Buy a snack from the buffet car / snack trolley – it just seems so much more exciting when you’re small

4) If all else fails, iPad games – Peppa, Thomas, of course – and so on, and anything downloaded (e.g. some Builder or Night Garden from iPlayer)

5) What’s in the bag? Being an independent little soul, E loves taking her own bag. We fill it with familiar faces and surprises for her to find on the journey

6) Presents, surprises, books, stickers, a Peppa magazine. All good distractions

And at our destination…

For all those early morning starts when you want a long weekend lie-in, there’s always Netflix (either downstairs if one of us is more awake, or we let her watch on the iPad squashed between us both in bed if there’s still some napping to be done).

The really useful thing about Netflix is you can set up your child’s own profile, meaning they only have access to age-appropriate content. Unlike on say, YouTube, where they could stumble across almost anything.

There’s a big range of children’s content, and here’s some of her current favourites:

* Bubble Guppies
* Thomas the Tank Engine
* Turbo 2 (looking forward to reviewing this one shortly)
* Max and Ruby

And here’s a couple of family favourites we’re all looking forward to watching together over the Easter break, in-between egg hunts and lovely family dinners:

* Cars
* Toy Story 3
* Up

What are you watching at the moment? Have a happy Easter!

I’m a part of the Netflix Stream Team, for which I was given a year’s subscription and an iPad to watch it on.

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