Road Trip Tips

A few handy ideas for making a road trip a little more fun for everyone…  If you have any, we’d love to hear them! 

Tips

• Record yourself or your children reading family favourite books or songs and play this in the car.  Bring the books to read along should you like.  Alternatively, download some recordings onto your device of new books.

• In large pencil cases or something similar, pack activities your child likes to play with- such as a small set of LEGO.  We keep some small toys and activities that are only for road or airplane trips, so that they are a bit exciting.  Why not put away a few small birthday or holiday presents for this purpose?

• Often in the summer libraries have cull sales– pick up a few copies of new titles for the trip, rather inexpensively!

• Bring a small whiteboard, whiteboard markers and an eraser for a different writing or drawing medium.

• Snacks, snacks and snacks!  Lots of healthy finger foods tend to keep little people happy.  Here’s a fun idea for a Snack Necklace:

http://make-it-your-own.com/road-trip-idea-snack-necklace/

• Plan some fun stops– maybe a science centre, pool or picnic lunch.  Even simply stopping and playing in a different playground or splash pad can be thrilling.

• Look for certain things: “Everyone on the lookout for a red car, a yellow sign, a licence plate with a “J” etc. or play I Spy for items in the car using colours.

• Play the alphabet game- think of a theme such as animals or cities of the world and name one for “A”, “B”, “C” etc.

• Bring blank sketch books and pencil crayons (sometimes crayons melt during hot summer road trips as we may have found out…) or add a little twist such as this Dots & Lines Sketch Book:

http://make-it-your-own.com/road-trip-idea-dots-lines-sketch-book/

• Make your own simple Magnet Board for play:

http://make-it-your-own.com/road-trip-idea-make-your-own-magnet-board/

• Bring along a pair of children’s binocular’s for looking for wildlife.

• Play 20 Questions or Who am I?  (Where you think of a person, place or thing and the family members try to figure out who or what it is in 20 questions or less.)

• If your children are older, bring a few buttons.  This way they can play tic, tac toe with a sibling using the buttons, have one draw a maze for the other to move the button through etc. (This is not recommended for children 0-3 or those that tend to put things into their mouths.)

• Involve your children in documenting the trip (whether it be choosing photo opportunities, taking the actual photos or using an old or pretend camera for pretend photos) during the driving and at stops.  Make a book for them to keep with printed photos when they get home .

• We love this “desk” that straps onto your child’s seat and is safety tested.  It makes a great space for books, drawing, snacks etc.  This would also allow your child to play simple games, do basic puzzles (keep them in a hard pencil box), create a scavenger hunt type checklist for a sibling of things to find or make these postcards to pop in the mail along the way:

http://make-it-your-own.com/road-trip-idea-send-a-postcard-to-yourself/

• Some friends of ours would draw a simple map of the journey with monuments, towns, sights etc. at approximately half an hour increments so that their child could cross things off when they reached them.  Perhaps this would lend to being asked a few less times that inevitable question…. “Are we there yet?”