Episode 27: What Are Some Great Travel Gifts for Kids?

Episode Title: Episode 27: What Are Some Great Travel Gifts for Kids?

Hosts: Astrid & Clint, creators of The Wandering Daughter

Planning for the holidays or a birthday coming up for a young traveler? In this episode, Astrid and Clint break down their favorite travel gifts for kids by age group, drawing from four-plus years of full-time family travel across 18 countries and six continents.

From world-themed board books and children's museum subscriptions for toddlers, to curiosity-sparking options like Little Passports subscription boxes for ages 5–11, to digital cameras and cooking classes for tweens, this episode covers every stage of a child's worldschooling journey. Astrid and Clint also share personal favorites, including their own Stack The Scoops card game, the Global Grubs cooking kit, and the immersive experience of KidZania, with a reminder that the best travel gifts don't have to be expensive to be meaningful.

For teens 16 and up, the conversation shifts to gifts that build independence: GoPros for adventure documentation, language learning with peers, solo travel opportunities, and even the gift of letting them plan the whole family trip themselves.

Whether you're shopping for a birthday, the holidays, or just looking for ways to inspire a lifelong love of travel in the young people in your life, this episode has something for every age.

Buy our game, Stack the Scoops: https://amzn.to/4lN084i

Buy a Global Grub cooking kit: https://amzn.to/3O0xXCD

Buy a GoPro: https://amzn.to/3NZUhME

 

🎧 Ready to dive in?

 

Buy our family gap year guide, "Hey Kids, Let's Go Travel!": https://thewanderingdaughter.com/hey-kids-lets-go-travel-planning-a-gap-year-with-family/

 

🤝 Want personalized guidance for your family's worldschooling journey? Book a one-on-one consultation with Clint and Astrid: https://thewanderingdaughter.com/consult/

 

💬 Have a question you'd like answered on a future episode? Submit it here: https://thewanderingdaughter.com/podcast

 

Support our worldschooling podcast: Join The Wandering Daughter on Patreon for episode transcripts, extra resources, and live office hours with Astrid and Clint: https://www.patreon.com/c/thewanderingdaughter/membership

 

📋 Episode Chapters: 00:00:00 – Introduction 00:00:24 – Welcome to Worldschooling Q&A 00:01:09 – Today's Question: What Are Some Great Travel Gifts for Kids? 00:01:28 – Why Age-Based Gifting Makes Sense 00:02:49 – Gifts for Under 4: Books, Children's Museums & KidZania 00:04:25 – Ages 5–11: Feeding Curiosity About the World 00:05:03 – ↩ Source of Intro Clip: Card Games & The Scoops 00:05:55 – Travel Journals for Tweens — and Parents Too 00:06:22 – Ages 12–15: Cameras, Cooking Classes & Global Grubs 00:08:52 – Personalized Photo Books to Preserve Travel Memories 00:09:47 – Ages 16+: GoPros, Language Classes & Independent Travel 00:12:39 – Outro & How to Support the Show

 

👉 For full show notes, resource links, and a complete episode guide, visit: https://thewanderingdaughter.com/episode-27-travel-gifts-for-kids

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Easy card games, like family games,things like that, board games,
which seems like a nicetime for a shameless plug.
Yeah, we got our games stack, the scoops.
It's not a travel themed game,
but it's a great game totravel with because it's small,
so we'll put the link tothat in the show notes.

(00:21):
We also created that wild world schooling.
This is world Schooling q and a. I'mAstrid, creator of the Wandering Daughter.
As a traveling family,
we've spent four years travelingfull-time to over 18 countries and six
continents. Wherever we go,
we try to learn as much as we can aboutthe countries and cultures we visit.

(00:42):
While we didn't coin the term, welike to call this world schooling,
using the world as our classroom.
Each week my husband Clint and I willanswer one question about world schooling
and share our experiences oftraveling the world with our kids.
Ready to get started?Great, let's dive in.

(01:09):
All right,
so today's question is what aresome great travel gifts for kids?
So this is a good one and Ithink it's good for the holidays,
but also good at any time of year,
especially if there's a birthdaycoming up or something like that, or.
If you know anyone that's about to starttraveling in the next couple months.
That is true. Yeah, Ilike to break it down.

(01:31):
So I have an article on my site that lists
some of my favorite travelgifts that I recommend,
but I like to break itdown into age group.
I think depending on the age,
your interests will be different andthere are also different levels of

(01:52):
engagement with travel that yourkids will do depending on their age.
So we're going to focus thisepisode or the structure of this
episode by age group. So under four,
let me backtrack a bit andjust identify the age groups.
So under four,

(02:14):
five to 11 and then 12to 15 and 16 in Oak.
So we'll go into depthabout kinds of gifts
that we recommend for that age.So starting with under four,
this is the age where kids are still just
learning or getting introduced to things,

(02:35):
and so the gifts that we recommendare things that will introduce
kids to the world.
So what are some things thatyou think would be good for
an under 4-year-old?
Probably books, like picture books,board books, but that seems the easiest.

(02:56):
It feels like there's a million of those.
Any gift shop you go into at airport inthe world has board books for that city.
Yeah.
Or just books that are aroundthe world type of books.
Things that have a lotof pictures and colors to
get the kids' attention.
Something that we like to dois visiting children's museums.

(03:20):
So if you go and buy a subscriptionfor your kid to a children's
museum, I guess this wouldbe more like a family gift,
but taking the kid to the children'smuseum, a lot of them will have
parts of the museum that focus onglobal things or places around the
world and they can try on differenttypes of clothes or they'll

(03:44):
house play food of theplace in that world.
So that gets them used to the ideaof just exploring in the world.
It's not a gift thatyou can buy in advance,
but I would say if you canget a gift certificate,
maybe online or something if youknow or someone is going to a

(04:04):
location that has this. But KidZania Ithink is a great for all ages of kids,
maybe max out at 10.
But.
For younger kids and older,
that's a great thing and theyhave KidZania all over the world,
including United States.
Yeah. I also have an articleabout KidZania on my website,
so check that out as well.

(04:25):
Moving on to ages five to 11.
I think at this age they're already,
they might be already in school ifyou're choosing to send them to school or
you've started homeschooling them,
and so they're primed for learning.
It's like what you want to doat this age is just feed that

(04:47):
curiosity about the world. So given that,
what would be some gifts thatyou would suggest for them?
Well, on the younger end of the spectrum,
I think reading books likebooks to get them reading.
We actually taught our youngest sonto read while we were world schooling,
so that's a good one. Easy card games,like family games, things like that.

(05:08):
Board games, which seems like anice time for a shameless plug.
Yeah, we got our games stack, the scoops,
it's not a travel themed game,
but it's a great game totravel with because it's small,
so we'll put the link tothat in the show notes. We.
Also created that Wild World's going.

(05:29):
What.
Else?
There's this great
subscription box called LittlePassports, and they come at a monthly,
you can,
I think you can get them just onetime or you can get a monthly thing,
but they will focus on specificcountries and then it's
different things related to that countryand then the kids can learn about

(05:53):
it and stuff. So that's a good one to do.
Yeah, I think also,
especially if they're on the higherend of that five to 11 range,
a travel journal, it might be a greattime to start getting into journaling.
They're seeing lots ofthings or observing.
They're probably feeling emotions Ithink is a great time to get them into
journaling. And also as parents, if youare not journaling yet on this trip,

(06:16):
it might be a good time for youto get into journaling as well.
Yeah, exactly.
Cool.
So then let's move on tothe next age group 12 to 15.
So now you're getting intothe tween and teen ages.
Obviously they're startingto want to exert more
independence in their lives,

(06:38):
so the gifts that you want to givethem are things that will help
foster that independence. Whatwould you say would be a good gift?
I think so before I say thatwe're kind of skipping over many
electronics like gameconsoles or laptops or
tablets or things like that,largely because a lot of that,

(07:00):
especially at this age, the 12 to 15,
they probably already have that becauseof schooling reasons or because that's
something that's alreadya part of your family.
So we're not really addressingany of those things.
But in another electronicthat isn't on that list,
that is perfect for this ageand above actually is a camera.
And what's wonderful is you can getpretty inexpensive digital camera.

(07:22):
You can also find pretty inexpensivewaterproof digital cameras
and it gives the kids greatopportunity to just document
on their own of the thingsthat they are seeing.
Especially.
If your kid doesn't have a phone oranything else that can take pictures.
This is a great option.
Right. Yeah, I know both our older son,

(07:46):
he really loved having a camerawhen we were traveling together,
and then more recently our daughter justloves taking pictures of things that
she thinks it's cool and thenposting them online. So yeah,
I like to the idea ofgiving cooking classes for

(08:07):
instance, especially if you can finda cooking class in your home city
that's focused on somekind of global cuisine,
you and your child can do thattogether and that'll be a nice bonding
experience and if you can't, you'renot able to have access to that.
There's a great company called GlobalGrubs and they have cooking kits

(08:30):
that they will send youand you can make things
at home. So one that I didwas a mochi making kit,
and that was so funand we've been enjoying
Japanese style mochi icecream with meals in the last
few weeks or months, so that's been nice.

(08:52):
I think another one, and thisone might be hard to travel with,
so maybe this is more of you're backhome for the holidays and or post trip or
something like that,
but I think a personalized photo bookor a photo book of specific travels
Can really help capture that momentand also can help them remember it
more as they get older.

(09:13):
This is one of the things with thekids being kids as they get older,
some of these memories will fade.
So having some sort of photo bookthat's fresh and really try to keep it
specific to small chunks of your travels.
So even if you have to do multiple books,
that's great because thenyou get the depth of photos,
which I think is the important part.Sometimes you try to do too many,

(09:37):
it's just a littlehighlight of each thing,
but that's not really thememory triggering moment. Yeah.
What about above 16 or Yeah.
So 16 and over.
So now I think the focus shouldbe encouraging them to be
independent. So when they wereteens, you're giving them the skills,

(09:58):
building that up, and now it's like, Hey,
if you want to take a solotrip or something like that,
here's something that would behelpful for you for that. Or if
you want to explore the world orexperience the world on your own,
here's something that's goingto encourage you to do that.
So what would be somethingthat you would recommend?

(10:22):
I think this is, I'll stickwith the electronics thing.
I think you graduate from acamera to something like a GoPro.
If they're really into video or they wantto do some more adventurous things or
if your kids are starting tosnorkel or something like that.
I think a GoPro's a fun option thatdoes start to get a little bit more
expensive, but they're indestructible,so that's a great option.

(10:45):
Sometimes language learningclasses are good to give,
especially if it's something that'sa little bit more fun and not just
a dry boring class or something like that.
Peer to peer maybe with a peer grouplanguage course would be fun too,
especially there's so muchinteraction with peers at that point.

(11:06):
You can also pay for them togo on a trip on their own.
That would be a great gift andit could be something small.
They don't have to go aroundthe world or anything like that,
but it could be like go solo and go tofly to grandma's house on their own or
something like that.
I think also giving them autonomyto plan whole sections of the

(11:29):
trip, even if it's for the whole family,
but them being able to plan wholesections of it. World's going.
Family friend of ours let theirdaughter basically plan an entire
trip with the mom and her.
And.
That was.
The mom didn't know what to expect. Yeah,

(11:50):
something small that's kind of fun isjust like a personal passport holder.
That way you can choose somethingthat kind of fits their personality
a little bit.
I think any luggage,accessories, anything where they,
because up until this point,
largely parents have beenpicking basically what their luggage is going to be

(12:10):
like, what all their thingsthey're going to bring with them.
Giving.
Them some autonomy overthem. Chewing. Yeah.
Anything else?
I think that's it. As Imentioned before, I do mention,
I have a article on mywebsite about travel gifts,
so you can check that out foreven more ideas of what to

(12:34):
gift your kids to encouragethem to travel. Yeah.
Good. Well, that's all for today.
Thank you for joining us on this episodeof World Schooling q and a with Astrid
and Clint.
Be sure to check out the show notes forany links we mentioned in the episode
and visit my website,
the wandering daughter.com to divedeeper into world schooling and family

(12:57):
travel.
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(13:19):
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(13:40):
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Until next time, happy travels. Bye.