Pared Down and Powered Up: Preparing for Travel Success with a Big Family

This post is sponsored by Amazon. All opinions are my own.

Jack, my oldest who is now 11, has always been a voracious reader. He learned to read and write at an early age, and while he excels at math especially, reading is a fun and safe place for him to go when social and sports are overwhelming for him. Zoe is 9 and while she also enjoys reading, she hasn’t really found any stories that call to her beyond the “Who is” non-fiction series. When we travel, books and stories are the perfect way to wind down from the excitement of air travel and new experiences.

This spring break, we get to take the whole family on vacation! One full day of planes, trains and automobiles and we will be on the islands with children ages 11, 9, 6, 3 and 1 years old. Traveling with children is already challenging without mentioning the back-breaking gear they all require. The Amazon Fire HD 8 Kids Edition Tablet is a tool we confidently employ, as it has 32 GB internal storage, and up to 12 hours of mixed-use battery life. A subscription to FreeTime Unlimited grants access to 15,000 popular apps and games, videos, books, and educational content from PBS Kids, Nickelodeon, Disney, and more. That accounts for an incredible amount of carry-on space while managing to keep Jack, Zoe, and even Beau and Evvie engaged and learning.

For the older kids, I encourage them to set and follow their own limits when it comes to screen time and reading time (within appropriate parameters). The Amazon Fire HD 8 Kids Edition Tablet has a Parent Dashboard that allows me to log in from any web browser and access which books they like best, Discussion Cards for me to reference, and track how long they spent reading as well. For those of us with larger families, younger children and divided attention, it also has a setting that only allows access to movies and games as a reward for reading goals reached.

While my big kids are usually pretty self-motivated and disciplined, of course my 6-year-old and 3-year-old aren’t quite there yet. There is a variety of engaging apps that not only save the space in our carry-ons with digitally amazing content, but I am confident that the programs they are using on the Amazon Fire HD 8 Kids Edition Tablet  like the Disney Puzzle Packs and the Frozen Junior E Book are entertaining while fostering learning and skill process as well.  Whether we are on an airplane, in a waiting room or simply lounging in the sand on the beach, it’s helpful to all of us when there is something worthwhile that will capture their attention.

We are headed on another long plane ride with all five kids for spring break, and I am definitely packing all of our Amazon Fire HD 8 Kids Edition Tablets. They not only come in handy for the travel portion, but also when we all need a little down time. It is certain to be a relaxing and hopefully smooth vacation!

This post is sponsored by Amazon. All opinions are my own.