Gift ideas for travel loving kids

If you have keen little travellers in your family or need to purchase a gift for someone you know who loves travel, please check out this list of some of the best travel gifts for kids. Perfect for birthdays, Christmas or even as an alternative to chocolate at Easter!

These are original and fun travel gift ideas for your travel-loving family members or friends.

Scratch off World Map

We bought Ned a scratch-off world map for his 6th birthday and it takes pride of place on his bedroom wall. We always look at where we have been, and are going. Apparently, we need to scratch off Russia, China and Antarctica soon – I wonder why?! We think these are one of the best gifts for travellers.

This map would look fantastic in any child traveller’s bedroom. Purchase through Australian Geographic.

Cute Passport Holders

Kids of all ages are going to love having their very own passport holder.

Not that our kids actually get to hold their passports much when travelling; ha! They are in a safe location on me! At least with their own covers I can quickly identify each passport.

You can purchase these from various places. Try this site for some cute options and you can also personalise!

Head Torches

Perfect for camping (check out our ultimate camping packing checklist); and, we have taken head torches on a couple of OS adventures. They also provide entertainment for the kids when they don’t have any toys with them. Head torches are great for travelling or camping as they free up your hands. I don’t think we’d ever use hand held torches again.

There are lots of different ones to choose between. Most of the kids sized ones will be lightweight and adjustable, there should be a couple of light settings (from dim to brighter) and it should tilt.

You can buy them at Kathmandu.

Ninja Full Face Snorkel Mask

We took a Ninja full face mask to Hawaii for the kids for their first time snorkeling. Highly recommend this product to get your kids into the water. Can’t wait to give them another crack soon.

You can buy them directly through Ninja Shark.

Luggage tags

Lots of different themes and options available for luggage tags. We currently have Lego shaped tags. Find them here.

Magic Water Colouring

The Melissa and Doug brand have some amazing travel products, one of which is the magic water colouring pad. No mess and the colours magically appear when painted on with the water pen. They can be used over and over and over again. Perfect for travel loving kids on the plane, airport, station or car trip!

Check out lots of Melissa and Doug products here.

World Globe

Ned’s globe doubles as Earth by day and stars by night! The night globe shows key stars and constellations with both the Latin and common names.

I remember as a child looking at the globe to see where my grandparents were travelling – it had lines all over it showing the flights they took!

A great travel idea finder – spin the globe and see where it lands! You can find them here.

A gift voucher for an experience for anywhere in the World

I am huge on giving an ‘experience’ as a gift rather than ‘items’. I have been doing this where possible for years now. It’s super exciting that now it is easy to arrange gift vouchers for experiences all over the world.

I’d recommend checking out Klook for the best deals in Asia. You’ll find many attractions at up to 60% off through this site.

A Travel Journal

This one can be age dependent. Ned took a basic travel journal to Hawaii but I think he was too young as we didn’t use it. He was happier drawing on normal paper. There are many different types of journals, as the kids get older I will be encouraging them to write in them.

It’s not only a great memory for them but also as a sneaky way of getting them to keep on top of reading and writing while we are missing school!

So many of my diaries from our past trips were written on little notebooks, ideally I’d like to type them all up but then I would lose some of the authenticity of them as I’d no doubt have to fix up all the spelling and grammar errors (these are what make reading back through the journals so entertaining!).

Binoculars

Ned and Olive don’t have their own pair of binoculars but I think a decent pair are on the gift list. I think that it is better to go for better quality binoculars with decent magnification rather than just a toy.

Also, choose binoculars which are appropriate to the age of the child for a better fit on their face. These ones from Kathmandu look great!

Travel Games and Card Games

We have found the easiest and best travel games are travel card games. We have snakes and ladders, Scrabble and Pop n Go all in travel sizes but they are fiddly and some have small pieces (even if they are magnetic, they are still easily lost).

Uno is always popular with such a range of ages and a normal pack of cards has endless possibilities. We have a travel pack of snap cards – it only has about 10 destinations but the kids can recognise them all.

Available pretty much everywhere these days!

Little Passports

This is one that I have not road tested personally. I’d love to. I think it would be great fun for the kids and they would be really excited to receive a gift like this once a month.

Little Passports delivers a travel adventure right to your door! Each subscription will have your child rushing to the mailbox, waiting for packages highlighting a new global destination, US state or fun science experiment. They’ll receive letters, souvenirs, pop-out models, activities, experiments, stickers and more. Inspire a life-long interest in travel, language and world cultures with Little Passports!

Choose from the following 4 subscriptions depending on your child’s age and interests:

Early Explorers: ages 3-5, discover a new world theme each month, like oceans, music & dinosaurs
World Explorers: ages 6-10, explore a new country each month with souvenirs and hands-on activities
Science Expeditions: ages 9 and up, reveal mysteries of the world through science experiments & activities
USA Edition: ages 7-12, discover the USA with monthly activities, games, science experiments & more

Kids Digital Camera

Ned and Olive love, love, love, taking their own photo’s. There are some great child-friendly cameras out there these days. I am going to get Ross onto investigating this. I think a kids camera should be waterproof, shatterproof and take decent quality photo’s. I’ll update with a link for you when we have sourced what we think is the best!

Other technical gift ideas

A tablet, phone, laptop, surface computer, camera, kids drone

Ok, I am not going to go into great detail here as we haven’t really used many of these products. The kids use our tablets (which are 100 years old) for movies and to use Epic Books (so we don’t need to pack books when we travel) but they don’t have their own camera, phone, ipod or drone.

Using Epic Books is great when we are travelling. There are heaps of books to choose between which you can download to use when you are offline. There are books which can be read to you and others which you read yourself. The book styles are quite ‘American’ I suppose I’d call it as they are quite different from what we borrow from the library. No matter, the kids love to read on the tablet!

Kids Backpack

We bought Ned and Olive a little kids backpack from Mac Pac. They are small and comfortable but if they were to carry more items (than just a change of clothes, soft toys and some snacks) then we would need to go up a size. Once we get to our destination we don’t really use the kids backpacks so I need to have a little think on how to best use them (i.e. one can be my day pack?).

Lego

Lego can go either way! There are lots of little bits which are easily lost, but I think if you are not taking a particular ‘set’ where pieces could be lost and take a carry set like the one Smiths Holiday Road have made, you’ll have happy little kids.

Books for travel-loving kids

This could end up being a particularly long list as there are some great books out there for travel loving kids. Here is a short list of some we love and some we are hoping to buy and read soon.

Lonely Planet

All of the kids Lonely Planet books we have are awesome and we read them ALL the time! There are activity books. fact books, pop up books, famous places and people books, no adults allowed books. I think whichever books you buy they will be a hit for any age group.

National Geographic Kids

We don’t have National Geographic kids books as yet. But I’ll be ordering some for Christmas and birthdays next year. Especially as Ned get better at reading I think he will enjoy these fact finding books. Find them here.

Peppa Pig – Around the World Adventures

Olive is a big Peppa Pig fan and this is a great book which sees Peppa set off to some far away destinations. Quick and easy read. You can find many Peppa Pig books here.

Maisy Books

There are a few great Maisy books to introduce your little one to the world of travel. From plane travel, camping, visiting a museum, Maisy goes on lots of adventures. Find them here.

Holiday sticker books

Sticker books are always great entertainment for doctors waiting rooms, long journeys and waiting at restaurants.

There seems to be a huge variety available and they can be incredibly cheap entertainment! Find loads here.

Activity Books

The kids love activity books. We have a couple that wipe clean so they can be used again and again and others where you can rip the page out once finished.

Some are travel related but others are just a great activity to keep the kids entertained whilst travelling. Find lots of options here.

This list covers off some original and fun gift ideas for travelling children. I hope that it gives you some ideas on what to buy your child who loves travelling. There are plenty of gift ideas here for people who love travelling.

Want to keep in touch via email? Please sign up here. I don’t send out too many emails and it’s just a really nice way to keep in touch xx

 

** This article may contain affiliate links. This means that if you make a purchase after clicking on the link, I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.

** Please read our disclaimer for more information.