Keeping children occupied on a long journey isn’t an easy task because no matter how prepared I am for the general boredom, there’s only so much I can do to keep the kids occupied before they get bored of me too.
We considered buying a portable DVD player because we do travel quite regularly but then we thought about the fact that we’d either have to buy a double screened one (more expense) or buy two separate DVD players to avoid the inevitable arguments over what they watch (even more expense) so ended up deciding against that idea.
But then a couple of weeks ago, we called Sky up to discuss potentially cancelling our package and they offered us a couple of incentives to stay with them – one of which was the Sky Go Extra package which I think is usually £5 a month. Sky Go Extra lets you download films and TV programmes to your tablet, phone or laptop to watch at a later date so it’s great to download a couple of films in advance of a journey. It’s free is you have Sky multi-room and there is a free 2 month trial on it at the moment so you could even just use it for that time and then cancel it…. Or you could call Sky and ‘discuss’ cancelling and see if they can include it in your package for free!
You can also download BBC iPlayer and 4OD, both of which let you download TV shows and watch them later. I can’t find any option for you to do this with ITV though but keep an eye out as I imagine that they’ll be considering this now you can do this with Sky, BBC and C4.
For the car, my two have one of those bags each that attaches to the seat in front and converts into a little desk so they can easily prop their iPad up to the right angle but if you don’t have one, a quick search on eBay for ‘tablet headrest mount’ brings up lots of gadgets to help you attach your tablet to the seat in front – prices start from around £5.
Our iPad stands have little stands built in to them so for travelling on a train or a plane, as long as you have a little table you’re good to go. This was Miss Frugal watching The Princess Diaries on a recent train journey home from London. I love watching her face change while she watches….
It’s not even that bad on your battery – we charged the iPads up to 100% before we set off on a long journey last month and one film took the battery levels to around 84%.
So instead of buying a portable DVD player, you can use your existing tablet (or even your phone) to watch films or TV when you’re on the move. Make the most of what you already have and get more from your smartphone or tablet – we generally pay enough for them to start with! 😉
Oh, and don’t forget some headphones unless you want to listen to it too!
