So I mentioned a little while back that we’re driving from Louisiana to Utah in a few weeks. This is brand new territory for me. I came later in my parents’ lives, way after their cross-country road trip days, so we never really did road trips growing up. When my husband and I were newlyweds, we didn’t really have a reliable enough car for much road-tripping, and then, up until this summer, we’ve always been able to find reasonable airfare within 4-5 hours of us.
Until now.
I’ve been checking airfare since the beginning of the year, but the same flights we took last year would cost us 3-4 times as much this summer. Throw in a car rental and we could seriously take a fully-loaded tropical vacation.
So. We’re driving. And I’ve been trying to figure out how we can keep everybody occupied and happy for 27 hours each way in the car (that doesn’t involve 27 hours of fighting or 27 hours of crying or 27 hours of video games, although, to be completely honest, 27 hours of video games sounds better than 27 hours of fighting.)
So I’ve put together a binder of simple activities to keep my kids at least semi-aware of their surroundings.
None of them are exactly earth-shattering (although one of my favorite and last memories of my mom is a rather epic round of the license plate game that took months before we finally tracked down Hawaii), but I’ve put them all in one place and used cute fonts. So, you know, the essentials. This is the map I used (it can either be just a reference–I’m having my kids color each state we visit); be sure to check out the whole site–it’s full of ADORABLE printables and activities. Everything else can be found here in this pdf:
Kid’s Road Trip Survival Guide from Our Best Bites
You’re going to need …
- 1 3-Ring Binder per child
- Sheet protectors
- Pencil Pouch
- Various drawing/writing tools (I used pens, washable markers, and colored pencils)
- Scissors
- Glue Sticks
- Postcard stamps (optional—if you want to send postcards to friends or yourself)
- Money for postcards
- Pencil sharpener for colored pencils
- Paper, cardstock, and/or lined paper
- Stickers for the road trip scavenger hunt
- Map of the United States
- Kid’s Road Trip Survival Guide from Our Best Bites
Find a sturdy pencil pouch that has three holes and will fit into a 3-ring binder:
Fill it with a glue stick or two, scissors, postcard stamps, money for postcards, markers (I was able to raid my kids’ school supplies, used and unused),
colored pencils,
pens,
and stickers for the scavenger hunt.
Place the filled pencil bag at the front of the binder.
Place the scavenger hunt, license plate game, map, postcard passport, art gallery, and vacation journal pages in sheet protectors (I put the scavenger hunt on the front and the license plate game on the back of one sheet protector, then put the map opposite the license plate game so my kids could see where different states are on the map.)
After the postcard passport, put several pieces of cardstock so kids can glue the postcards onto it. The Art Gallery goes next, followed by several sheets of plain white paper, then the vacation journal followed by lined paper.
I’ve gotten some awesome tips on road trips so far, but now that I’ve shared these binders, I’m basically begging for your very best tips to keep all of us sane! We’re going to need them!
Questions & Reviews
http://pinstrosity.blogspot.com/2014/05/show-and-tell-saturday-road-trips-with.html
Pinstrosity shared my best road trip tip on their blog last month. Basically, we pay our kids for good behavior (25 cents every 15 minutes). Then they use the money they earn to buy their own extra snacks and trinkets. =)
One road trip with our nephews we gave each child a roll of quarters at the beginning of the journey. We informed them that the money was theirs to spend once we arrived at our destination if they were polite, patient, and obedient during the drive. However, if I had to ask them to do something (or not do something) more than once, they would lose a quarter. Once the first quarter was lost, they knew we meant business and the ride was super pleasant. (I also made sure we had plenty of notebooks, games, snacks, audiobooks, etc. to set them up for success.) Good luck with your trip!
We drive 12 hours every year to visit Oregon from Utah. Some of the best things I have done are:
Seatbelt pillow. I followed this tutorial and loved it: http://www.superjenn.com/countdown-to-disney-seatbelt-pillows-for-the-trek/
Books on tape. They are a lot better than movies because no one gets car sick, they last longer, they engage the kids imaginations, and kiddos can color and other stuff while it’s going.
Magnetic Mr. Potato Head: I made a magnetic Mr. potato head from coloring pages. Then put it in a thrifted tin to keep it all together. It’s a favorite. Let me know if you want me to email you a copy.
This year I am going to try the Lego travel kit and the marshmallow construction kit. Thank you Pinterest!
Good luck Driving!
we love road trips and always plan to stop every 2-3 hours for at least 10 minutes. It gives everyone time to stretch, we run/walk around a bit wherever there is space and go to the bathroom. we take a longer break for lunch and dinner and that helps to keep the peace too along with all of the other fabulous tips. The breaks are what makes it better for us and we only do one movie and keep the video games to a min. too, just like at home. If we need to drive longer one day we might let them keep it longer.
Another thing that I don’t think anyone has mentioned is origami. It is easy and entertaining to make toys out of paper or one of our favorites is paper boxes to store little things in or decorate. Have fun and enjoy, getting there can really be half the fun if you make it that way.
Most of the time with our long drives we’ve had the in-the-car DVD players that the kids could watch movies on, and that pretty much worked for them (we’ve never tried going more than about 13 hrs away, although one of those trips ended up being 18+ hours because of some really bad traffic). Sometimes we split it into 2 days, but the last time in Feb we drove straight through both ways, so it was a full day of driving. We’ve done the dollar store toys every hour or so, and that works really well. AND have TONS of snacks in a bag up front that you can pass out throughout the day – helps to not have to stop and get stuff at gas stations other than gas. We packed sandwiches or Uncrustables and granola bars for lunch, and things like oatmeal squares and nutrigrain bars and such for breakfast, so all we had to get on the road for fast food was dinner, and they were easy to eat in the car without too much mess. We stopped at rest stops to run for a few minutes every 2-3 hours or at bathroom breaks.
My kids are obsessed with electronics though, and this last trip mommy and daddy were lazy, so we let them do video games and movies the whole way. The two older kids have Kindles, so we loaded up new free games for them, and then tried to put some movies on, but there wasn’t any space. So my husband found an external drive where we could load all the movies, and it acts like a network in the car, so the kids could connect and stream movies from the external drive and have plenty to choose from – worked FABULOUSLY! The 2 year old loves Mickey Mouse clubhouse, so I would just put on episodes of Mickey on my iPad and that kept her happy. My kids do NOT sleep in cars – ever. Just bad luck for me I suppose. Even when we get them up really, really early. My hubs and I downloaded the audio book for Ender’s Game, and listened to that in the front (the older kids had volume-limiting headphones for their Kindles), and about the last 3rd of the day my 10yr old decided he liked what we were listening to (much to my surprise) so he put his Kindle down and just listened to the audio book – now every time we get in the car he asks if we can turn it on again!
When I was little, we lived in CA and would drive to UT to visit the grandparents every few months, so my mom had sewn up little covers that went over the back of the front seats, and on the back had a bunch of pockets (like those shoe things that hang over your door) and she would put crayons and books and stickers and such in those, so we could easily reach them from the back seats. As we got older, and there were more kids, then my parents just started driving at night (we had a van by then) so that we’d sleep through most of it, and would be only an hour or two away by the time we woke up in the morning. I have LOTS of memories of waking up in Las Vegas with all the lights and signs when we’d stop for gas. 😉
I love this so much Kate! I recommend Boxcar Children on audiobook as well.
I also put together car bags for my kids for Christmas a couple years ago. I bought some cheap cookie sheets and then made up some magnetic stuff like Star Wars guys/ships, pictures of the kids, letters, etc. I also made them each a fun I Spy bag and stocked their car bags with some books, a pad of paper, and crayons. I made up an I Spy game with pictures of things we usually see on I-15. I also made a laminated checkers board with magnetic playing pieces that my boys like playing. I’m excited to check out your ideas. I love the binder idea because I feel like that’s something we struggle with in the car–keeping everything together and tidy!
We always played a game called “My Father Own’s a Grocery Store” that my kids like, too. It works better for kids who can read. Whoever starts says, “My father owns a grocery store and in it he sells ‘a’.” Then everyone has to try and guess what that person thought of that starts with “a.” It could be anything in a grocery store: avocado, apple, apricot, etc. Whoever guesses it gets to go next and uses the next letter in the alphabet. As kids we would change it up sometimes and play where we’d have to think of a different kind of animal meat–we are weird! I think that mostly came about because we could never think of things in a grocery store that start with letters like “Q” and “X.” So for “q” it would always be something like “quail meat.” Anyway, like I said, we are weird, but we got a lot of good laughs with stuff like “armadillo meat.”
One thing I do with my kids is make them wait for things like snacks or a movie. We live in St. George and travel to Idaho and Salt Lake quite a bit (not exactly a 27 hour trip, but anyway…). We actually rarely do movies in the car because my kids are pretty good at entertaining themselves. But when we have we give them a certain point (usually the light house in Cedar City) that they watch for. When we reach that point they can have a snack or watch a movie. It works well because then they have something to look forward to and don’t use up the special stuff right when we get in the car.
We took a road trip a few years ago when my twins were three. I bought cheap plastic serving trays at target and covered the bottom with glossy contact paper. They used dry erase crayons to color on them and it gave them a hard surface for other activities. I had a cardboard file box filled with gallon bags of activities (we were gone for 6 weeks, although not all time was travel time). Each bag had 2 of the same activity, note pads and stickers, color wonder books and markers, travel aquadoodles, giant pipe cleaners and foil for building blocks, play dough inside balloons. Probably the biggest hit was finger paint sealed in zip locks. I taped the bags to the trays and they pushed the paint around and mixed all the colors. I also used the iPhone app for roadside america. We planned some stops ahead of time, but if we needed a car break, I would put in our location and it would bring up unusual points of interest in the area. Yes, we stopped to see the largest ball of postal string! But there was also really great stuff like a huge dungeons and dragons themed playground in Illinois. If you don’t have an iphone, you can find things ahead of time on the website. We are about to go on another trip this summer. Now that they are older, I’m going to add these binders to my box.
My daughter was lucky enough to have a best friend growing up who was an only child. So our daughter got invited to go on family vacation with them a number of years. One year, their destination was about 12 hrs away. I thiink they were preteens so you will have to modify these ideas to fit younger kiddos. But since the other family was footing the bill for the trip, I sent along “goodie bags” where the girls would open one item /hour in the car. The bags were identical and they would have to agree which gift to open. Everything was wrapped in something simple like newspaper or tissue. Some items were craft items that could keep them busy through the trip, sometimes it was a pack of gum or other treat or food or a little game of some kind. The favorite was a giant jawbreaker candy that gave them both chuckles for many hours. Good luck on your long trip–you are building family memories that I hope you kids will remember for all the right reasons!