It’s official, at the ripe age of four, Mr. T has moved right into the LEGO stage. Finally, I’ve been waiting for one of my children to really get into LEGO. I have such fond memories of my sister and I playing with my father’s old LEGO collection for what seems days on end and I want my children to have a bit of that childhood as well. I know times are different and life is more fast paced, but still, I’d love for them to have the opportunity to play freely and get lost in that special little world of play. Which is why I put together a simple LEGO travel tin.

We don’t do IPads or mobile phones and my boy is not the colouring or puzzle making kind of kid, so we take our LEGO travel tin with us wherever we go. Not only is it a great way to entertain an energetic four year old but it also encourages creative thinking, sparks the imaginations and provides those beautiful experiences little brains need that only ‘real world’ play can provide.

How to put together a LEGO travel tin for building fun on the go

It’s pretty simple and straight forward:

• Pick the perfect tin. It should not be too big or too small, it needs to close well and perhaps look appealing. I found our emoji tin in the dollar shop but here’s an emoji tin lunch box I found on Amazon that might just be perfect.
• Add a building plate. The tricky thing is to find building plates that are just the right size. You can try standard LEGO Classic baseplates and see if they fit, get some LEGO compatible smaller building plates or you can cut your preferred size from this LEGO compatible silicone mat baseplate. You might have to get a bit creative here to make it work with the size of the tin you found.
• Add blocks. The blocks in our LEGO collection are a mix of new and old ones. One thing I did figure out was that small LEGO boxes in different colours (like this LEGO Classic quad building pack) or themes  are perfect for these travel tins. They come with instructions and are designed so you can build a couple of great things with only a handful of bricks. On the images you might see we’ve got the blue creativity box and the which made the train, whale and that little house. I know some kids don’t care about instructions and want to wing it, which is ideal. But if you have a boy like Mr. T, who LOVES instruction books, well, this is your (affordable!) golden tip.
• Have a bit of variety in there. We’ve got some little animals, different people, car parts and so on.
• Beware of putting ‘special’ LEGO items in the travel tin. It might be a good idea to take them or maybe not. In general we have the rule that we leave special toys at home because we always seem to lose them. Whatever works for you.

Travel tin fun, both at home and on the go

Once you’ve put together your LEGO travel tin, all you need to do is not forget to take it with you. That’s all. Everything else will work itself out!

We’ve found travel tins to be absolute life savers. Not only do we play with them when out and about, we also use them during quiet time. Quiet time is that time before bedtime in our family, where we wind down and calm our minds. In theory that is …

Quiet time is also that time when we could use a little nap but won’t and play quietly for a while instead. Or when we need to calm ourselves down a bit or need some space. Getting the travel tins out always works like a charm.

You can have a look at our dinosaur and mermaid  and (vintage) toy car travel tins here if you want to, they’re terribly cute.

Hopefully this gave you a couple of ideas for putting together your own LEGO travel tin. There are many more LEGO travel ideas out there, but I think you’ll like the LEGO and travel tin ideas from Mama, Papa Bubba the best: you’ll love the portable LEGO kit,  LEGO patterns busy box and pretty cool portable travel tins.

Enjoy!

Ann*

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