Favorite ways to keep kids occupied in MDR

This will be our first cruise with two kids (DDs 6 and 2), and while they will probably go to the kids club for dinner a few times, we'll also have them with us in the MDR a few nights. They eat in restaurants fairly often and are well behaved, but the MDR can stretch the meal on for quite a while.

With that in mind, what are some of your favorite ways to keep your kids occupied during dinner? I'll have coloring books and crayons, maybe some stickers, etc. but I'm open to new ideas. We have a no-electronics rule at mealtimes, so iPad games are out. But I'd love other suggestions! I'm just looking for something new and creative, but that won't interrupt other diners.

Your waiter will usually bring some finger foods to keep the little ones busy while you're ordering, and such. I think the coloring books, or even picture books would be fine. The 2 year old is trickier than the 6 year old...coloring won't last long with a 2 year old!

If they do ok in restaurants, they'll be fine in the dining room. You can always ask your waiter to "speed things up", if needed!

Our 17 month old grandson was actually much better in the dining room that we expected. RCI provided crayons and the paper children's menu was also fo coloring....Our waiter brought cut up fruit the minute we sat down...and he was amazed at all the busyness of the dining room especially when the waiters started clapping and singing...he was very entertained.:D

My two daughters will be 5 and 3 when we sail on our first cruise. They typically are good when we go out to eat now but do get bored, they are kids, its expected. Coloring maybe keeps them busy for 10 minutes, lol....I plan on taking some small picture books and mini magna doodles or etcha sketches. Maybe a little memory card game. But really that is it. We should be sitting with other family members so they will have them to be goofy with. We are also sailing on RCI so we are in the early sitting for dinner. On the first day of the cruise I will sign the kiddos up for family time dining, which is where their meals are done in about 45 minutes and adventure ocean staff come and pick them up.

CONVERSATION!

talk to each other about your day. What did you do? What will you do in the evening. What will you do tomorrow. What is your best memory of the cruise so far.

Sometimes we will play word games or trivia at the table too. We like to teach currency/country or capital cities as a game. Sometimes my DH will give the kids a little history lesson about the port we are visiting the next day = you can get the "port" sheets from guest services and talk about them at dinner too. Perhaps too advanced for your 2 year old, but you can engage the 6 year old with conversation. You can even do video diaries each night - taping them talk about what they did that day.

We generally cruise during the school year, and the teachers' will often ask the kids to complete a vacation journal. So sometimes, I will let them work on their journals for a bit. This is a good activity for your 6 year old. Do they have an ipod/ipad/leap frog that they can take pictures with. Let your child take pictures to remember their trip, and they can later print and add those pictures to their journal.

I just remembered a game we used to play when the kids were younger (even at 2). We'd play "guess who I'm thnking of". They would think of someone (usually a Disney character) and then give clues about who they were thinking off and we'd guess. They could have played this game for hours.

My kids are older now but here are some things we did:

I Spy in restaurant

I Spy books

Tic Tac Toe

Crayons/color book/maze books/notebook....my DS started drawing his own mazes in a notebook around the age of 3/4. I never saw anything like it and I could only ever find one way out.

Hang Man (Start with easy 3-4 letter ones for those learning to spell and read).

Thanks for the suggestions all! I'm realizing my post made it sound like this is our first cruise. We've actually cruised several times, and we've taken our 6 year old, but it will be DD2's first time. I think we're slightly nervous since we can't double team them anymore!

That program on Royal sounds awesome! We have anytime dining on Carnival Miracle, and last time we were able to have the same awesome waiter each night. He was awesome with my DD, and also helped by bringing our food out a bit faster than usual. We still had plenty of time to relax, but it sure was nice to finish in an hour and 15 minutes vs. two full hours! So hopefully we'll find someone good again.

Hopefully the 2 year old will cooperate and we'll have a good experience!

We find the iPad and leap pad occupy ours well.

Just keep the volume muted! Lol!

CONVERSATION!

 

talk to each other about your day. What did you do? What will you do in the evening. What will you do tomorrow. What is your best memory of the cruise so far.

 

Sometimes we will play word games or trivia at the table too. We like to teach currency/country or capital cities as a game. Sometimes my DH will give the kids a little history lesson about the port we are visiting the next day = you can get the "port" sheets from guest services and talk about them at dinner too. Perhaps too advanced for your 2 year old, but you can engage the 6 year old with conversation. You can even do video diaries each night - taping them talk about what they did that day.

 

We generally cruise during the school year, and the teachers' will often ask the kids to complete a vacation journal. So sometimes, I will let them work on their journals for a bit. This is a good activity for your 6 year old. Do they have an ipod/ipad/leap frog that they can take pictures with. Let your child take pictures to remember their trip, and they can later print and add those pictures to their journal.

oh thank you for such a great idea. I didn't think about a video journal. Also When you say the kids do a paper journal , do you just use a scrapbook type thing with big plain pages or something different? cheers!

oh thank you for such a great idea. I didn't think about a video journal. Also When you say the kids do a paper journal , do you just use a scrapbook type thing with big plain pages or something different? cheers!

the teacher's have always given them the journals - typical school notebooks - like this (I said typical but when I went to search for an image, had a hard time finding one - so perhaps just typical for Canada!). Any notebook would do (check the dollar store)

Something else that is fun is a smash book. (google and watch videos on how to smash!).

You can get these at Michaels. We did this on our Disney cruises - and we took along ink stamps, ribbons etc. The kids would work on their smash books. They would journal at dinner, and then "smash" in the cabin. It's easy for a little one too to just stick in their favourite things - autographs - etc.

CONVERSATION!

 

talk to each other about your day. What did you do? What will you do in the evening. What will you do tomorrow. What is your best memory of the cruise so far.

 

Sometimes we will play word games or trivia at the table too. We like to teach currency/country or capital cities as a game. Sometimes my DH will give the kids a little history lesson about the port we are visiting the next day = you can get the "port" sheets from guest services and talk about them at dinner too. Perhaps too advanced for your 2 year old, but you can engage the 6 year old with conversation. You can even do video diaries each night - taping them talk about what they did that day.

 

We generally cruise during the school year, and the teachers' will often ask the kids to complete a vacation journal. So sometimes, I will let them work on their journals for a bit. This is a good activity for your 6 year old. Do they have an ipod/ipad/leap frog that they can take pictures with. Let your child take pictures to remember their trip, and they can later print and add those pictures to their journal.

These are great ideas. And I would stay away from ipad/tablet solutions if possible - just leads to more dramas.

We played a great game with my 3.75 year old on our recent cruise. He is really into writing, and the alphabet right now so we had a big piece of paper and had him write the alphabet in upper and lower case. It was very time consuming (think 1 to 2 courses of food) - because he would concentrate so hard on each letter, he's have to go back to the beginning of the alphabet and sing his way through to the next letter. (Sometimes I have to do that too). Of course each letter might require some discussion as well; he doesn't have all of them down yet. But - it worked for 3-4 dinners at various specialty restaurants on the ship before it lost his interest.

Apart from that we've brought puzzles, crayons, notepads - just a go-to kit of things. And at the end of the day, sometimes it works, and sometimes all the preparation in the world doesn't work.

Timing is the most important thing and that often is only governed by the restaurant and the servers. I actually don't like it when they bring him any food before we get our food. So what if he eats it and is done? Then he has to sit and wait while we get ours and eat.. That's not going to work. If they try to bring his early I will send it back, actually. Sometimes they think they are doing you a big favour by bringing it first (and that's usually waiters/waitresses that don't have kdis of their own.)

CONVERSATION!

 

talk to each other about your day. What did you do? What will you do in the evening. What will you do tomorrow. What is your best memory of the cruise so far.

 

Sometimes we will play word games or trivia at the table too. We like to teach currency/country or capital cities as a game. Sometimes my DH will give the kids a little history lesson about the port we are visiting the next day = you can get the "port" sheets from guest services and talk about them at dinner too. Perhaps too advanced for your 2 year old, but you can engage the 6 year old with conversation. You can even do video diaries each night - taping them talk about what they did that day.

 

We generally cruise during the school year, and the teachers' will often ask the kids to complete a vacation journal. So sometimes, I will let them work on their journals for a bit. This is a good activity for your 6 year old. Do they have an ipod/ipad/leap frog that they can take pictures with. Let your child take pictures to remember their trip, and they can later print and add those pictures to their journal.

Oh, you are totally amazing. I do hope we end up on the same cruise some day! I love, love, love the video diary idea. We do a travel journal with our granddaughter (as we used to do with our own children) and spend the dinner hour writing or drawing pictures in the journal, affixing ticket stubs, etc. Totally gonna also do the video journal next trip.

I agree with the conversation. Our dining room time was also spent talking about the day behind us, the next day, the food, etc. We also play I Spy, her favourite game currently. :) She's five. We've played A LOT of I Spy. Seriously. A LOT.

While electronic solutions aren't for everyone, at the end of the meal, if Papa and I want a little talk-time, we will put her favourite movie (currently Frozen, which we've see about as often as we've played I Spy) on the iPad and she'll have some quiet downtime while we finish our coffee and dessert. Again, not for everyone, but we find it a nice way to finish our meal.

She also dressed for dinner. I'm talkin' a princess dress (no, this wasn't a Disney cruise), hair in an updo, glitter makeup on her face - she insisted on the full effect and then reveled in the attention from the waitstaff and other passengers.

my son used to love these. I had fun with them too :)

http://www.wikkistix.com/

Another game is 20 Questions

We use a lot of the techniques that have been mentioned including the occasional iPad. We also try to take our nieces out to dinner a few times before we cruise to go over how we behave and for our now 7yo why we behave when we dine.

The kids are often done with dinner well before we are and they don't really enjoy dessert like most other kids (they are fruit and veggie monsters), so we also allow them to head to Camp Ocean early after we have finished our main course.

Oh, you are totally amazing. I do hope we end up on the same cruise some day! I love, love, love the video diary idea. We do a travel journal with our granddaughter (as we used to do with our own children) and spend the dinner hour writing or drawing pictures in the journal, affixing ticket stubs, etc. Totally gonna also do the video journal next trip.

 

I agree with the conversation. Our dining room time was also spent talking about the day behind us, the next day, the food, etc. We also play I Spy, her favourite game currently. :) She's five. We've played A LOT of I Spy. Seriously. A LOT.

 

While electronic solutions aren't for everyone, at the end of the meal, if Papa and I want a little talk-time, we will put her favourite movie (currently Frozen, which we've see about as often as we've played I Spy) on the iPad and she'll have some quiet downtime while we finish our coffee and dessert. Again, not for everyone, but we find it a nice way to finish our meal.

 

She also dressed for dinner. I'm talkin' a princess dress (no, this wasn't a Disney cruise), hair in an updo, glitter makeup on her face - she insisted on the full effect and then reveled in the attention from the waitstaff and other passengers.

I'd love to meet you too Dee!!

Your grand-daughter reminds me of my own. Seeing all the princess dresses in her closet brings a tear to my eye. she still loves to dress up, fancy hair etc. .... just not the princess dresses anymore :(

Try the "I'm thinking of a character" game with her. Let her give you clues until you get it. My kids really loved that game. Except, now we play, "I'm thinking of an NHL hockey player" lol

We use a lot of the techniques that have been mentioned including the occasional iPad. We also try to take our nieces out to dinner a few times before we cruise to go over how we behave and for our now 7yo why we behave when we dine.

 

The kids are often done with dinner well before we are and they don't really enjoy dessert like most other kids (they are fruit and veggie monsters), so we also allow them to head to Camp Ocean early after we have finished our main course.

I can't speak for Carnival but other lines almost always have a fruit plate on the menu. most often its served as an appetizer, but there is no reason you could not request it for dessert. Even if it's not on the dessert menu, tell them what fruits your kids like, and they will bring it for dessert.

We cruise with our four kiddos, who are now 2, 4, 4, and 7. It helps to have a dedicated "dinner bag" that I have packed up with crafts for the kids to do while waiting for dinner. So far, the paper bag puppets with "googly" eyes have been a big hit, and little foam stickers to decorate the bags have been fun.

I pack the dinner bag with random things, plastic spider rings, finger puppets, paper crowns with jewel stickers, things that will occupy the kids for quite awhile.

With the two year old (and occasionally with the older kids) it's been helpful to bring along the stroller to the dining room. The one we bring folds back so if my son falls asleep at the table, we just put him in the stroller, lay him down, ask for a table cloth to drape over him, and we continue enjoying our dinner.

My kids love going to "fancy dinner" and I always smile when I see other families with young kids in the dining room.

Jennifer

Our kids love eating at the MDR. On RCI we have always had fantastic waiters that loved to keep the kids entertained with magic tricks.

We also bring coloring pencils and books and play hangman and tic tac toe. Sometimes their father or I would take them up to kids club if they didn't want dessert.

Bubba83, you might check to see about adding the family time dining now so that's one less thing. They went on and did it on my RCI res for my son, but that might of been because of my questions and concerns with my 3 yr old son having high functioning Autism. He doesn't eat much right now, but in order for me to get him to eat it has to be quick and then he doesn't sit still for very long. I loved that they told me the Adventure Ocean will come down and meet up to get the kids so I can enjoy my dinner a little more, especially without him interrupting every 5 seconds my family is trying to talk.

We are taking our just two year old grand daughter on her first cruise next Friday. I have picked up a new present for each evening to keep her busy.... Just cheap stuff from the dollar store or 1-3 dollar bin at target.... Stuff she has never had before to keep her interest..... Sticker books,etc. I wrapped them in tissue paper to make her think she was really getting something.... If all else fails, we will go for a walk while waiting for dinner to arrive!

My kids are older now but here are some things we did:

 

I Spy in restaurant

I Spy books

Tic Tac Toe

Crayons/color book/maze books/notebook....my DS started drawing his own mazes in a notebook around the age of 3/4. I never saw anything like it and I could only ever find one way out.

Hang Man (Start with easy 3-4 letter ones for those learning to spell and read).

Your ideas are great; I've used most, and will implement the others. Our twins have cruised yearly (sometimes 2 per year) since age two, and have just turned 8. Our next cruise is in November, out of Long Beach.

My kids absolutely LOVE the kids club, but we have them dine with us at dinner....except one formal night (so we get an "adult only" fancy night.)

dd, now three, but was 14 months her first cruise, about to go on her 4th, packs a little bag. Those items are only used during dinner.

I switch up:

color wonder markers

magic market pad (character-the marker reveles the picture)

mini mega doodle

color book/crayon

books to read

her current/or next lvl brain quest cards (my kid loves them...)

magnet sets

I check out dollar spots at Target and Micheals, and pay attention for clearance stuff, then pick stuff up as I find it. For our Carnival cruise, I have a bunch of Dr. Suess related items, on the disney cruise I had disney stuff.

Though, I'll be honestly. Dh goes down first and orders while we finish getting ready. (Sitting and waiting bores me, I have better things to do, like watch the ocean.)

Then if need be dh/I will walk around with dd. this is a great photo op as we never make it, and we can get some just the two of us/them. THEN after dinner, dh takes dd, and I enjoy dessert and coffee (I'm a sahm, the cruise is for me to relax and dh to spend more time with kid since he works).

We've never used the kid's club, and wouldn't during dinner, anyway.

I made my grandson a quiet book. It is made mainly of felt and has different activities on each page, such as shape sorting, counting beads, a road with cars, etc. They are fairly easy to make and it occupies my 2 year old grandson for quite awhile. You can google quiet books online and get lots of ideas. Haven't tried it for a cruise yet but we will be doing that next year.