When my boys were younger, I always carried a bag with us whenever we went out for a meal or an appointment or on a train journey.  Ours is a fabric drawstring bag from the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, small enough to fit in another bag but big enough to hold plenty of things to do.  An innocent looking bag which contained all I needed to keep the kids occupied and happy while we waited for food or the doctor or travelled on the train or a plane.

Of course there were often phones and iPads involved too, especially on plane journeys, but I always brought the fabric bag as ‘non screen’  back up.

So what is in this magic bag of entertainment? No magical unicorns I am sad to say.

One of the best and simplest things I always had in there were the drawing books, plain paper, lined paper and the mini doodle book.  Enough for one each or we would draw on the same page or take turns adding to a picture.

The mini sticker books are brilliant and super fun, they are small and don’t have many stickers but they are cheap as chips and worth buying a few.  I remember my youngest spending ages with my cousin’s husband making sticker monsters while we waited for a very slow meal to be served when we visited England a few years ago.

There is a single jack in the bag, the rest are somewhere with the ball no doubt!  Portable games like this are great for the park (not so much in a restaurant).

For boys, a handful of cars is never to be sniffed at, they are entertainment for a long time, especially if you can draw a road somewhere and drive them around!

Sadly the entertainment bag is no longer deployed, but I still keep it, just in case!

Do you have a bag of tricks to keep the kids entertained?  What is in there?  What should I have put in mine!?

Happy Wednesday x