Is Morocco good to travel with primary-age kids (six to nine)?

If you ask me the best age to do a fuller Morocco trip, I will usually say six to nine. These children have real stamina now, they can walk the medinas without being carried, they ask brilliant questions, and they are old enough to remember the whole adventure in vivid detail. A primary-age child clambering over the kasbah at Ait Ben Haddou, riding a camel into the dunes, or haggling (badly and adorably) for a souvenir in the souk is having one of the formative experiences of their childhood, and parents see it on their faces.

The trick at this age is to make them active participants rather than passengers. I love giving primary-age kids a disposable or cheap digital camera and a "photo mission" — find five blue doors, photograph three different cats, snap the biggest pile of spices — which turns a wander through Chefchaouen or the Fes tanneries into a quest. Hands-on activities are gold: a pottery or tile workshop, baking bread in a village, a cooking class where they make their own mini-tagine, sandboarding down a dune, a treasure hunt I can set up with a riad. They will talk about the doing far more than the looking.

They can handle a more ambitious route, so a classic seven-to-ten day loop — Marrakech, the Atlas and a kasbah valley, a desert overnight, then Fes or the coast — works well, as long as we still break the long drives (the Marrakech-to-desert leg especially). The overnight in the Sahara is almost always the highlight: the camel trek in, the dunes to roll down, the campfire and drumming, and a sky thick with stars that genuinely stuns a city kid. Choose a comfortable camp and it is pure magic, not hardship.

Food gets easier too — most six to nine year olds will try a brochette or a mild tagine, and the ones who will not are perfectly happy on couscous, bread, eggs, fruit and the ever-present fries. Pack good walking shoes, sun protection, and small entertainments for the car (audiobooks and travel games save the longer transfers). Tell me what your kids are into — animals, building things, adventure, food — and I will weave those threads through every day.