As fun as it is to go on a family vacation, there is nothing fun about the continuous are we there yet questioning coming from the back seat of the car when you are road tripping. Traveling with children is tough enough at the best of times, but if you are going on a road trip with your kids and you need to do all that you can to keep them happy, entertained, and looking forward to what’s coming rather than thinking about being bored.
When you are going on a road trip, the chances are that you will be driving for a few hours at a time before having a break and doing something fun in between driving sessions. Stopping for lunch and a few goes at the batting cage will help your kids slough off some energy, but it also helps you as the driver and parent. Vacationing with children can be stressful enough as it is, so if you can make sure that you plan your routine shoot entertainment, you’re going to be doing a heck of a job already. Below, we’ve got some of the best ways that you can entertain your children during the road trip so that they don’t get bored.
- Play scavenger hunt games. Children will look out the window when they are in the back seat of the car and watch the world fly by. You could create a list before you get in the car of all of the things that they have to see and spot and show you while they are on the trip. Making up a road trip scavenger hunt for some bingo board games is going to help them to feel less bored and help you to keep your sanity.
- Build some snack boxes. What are the best things that children enjoy on any road trip or vacation or snacks. To save yourself the time and bother of being night 24 seven about snacks, when they can have snacks, what the next massage and whether they can have one right now, build out some snack boxes for them to keep with them during the trip will help. You can add small things such as different types of cereals, marshmallows, crackers, and even raisins.
- Play I Spy. What is the best for your support on a road trip is I Spy because everybody can get involved. You can choose to play I Spy in terms of colors or letters, or even play the first one to see which is something like the first one to see a dog wins. When someone sees a dog it’s that time to choose the next challenge.
- Ramp up the music and play Carpool Karaoke. If he’s ever seen the TV show, you’ll know that Carpool Karaoke gives you all a chance to sing out to your heart’s content and make lots of fun memories. You can also play it where you break into teams and take turns singing a line of a song – but that’s probably better for all the children. Unless you can play with nursery rhymes, of course! You can keep going with this game until somebody loses out and then the last person to sing a line correctly can choose the next one.
- Join in on the license plate game. Print out a list of all of the states to bring with you and once you stop playing, you won’t be able to stop. Mark off any states that you find the license plates of cars driving by. If you can, make it competitive and add initials or assign a highlighter colour. You can have a printed copy of all the states for each kid to keep with them so they can tick it off themselves and keep them occupied.
- Play 20 questions. It doesn’t matter how old the children are, they will love to be able to play 20 questions. Trying to figure out the mystery animal, vegetable or mineral and 20 questions or less makes a fun game and gets everybody involved. It should be a good way to entertain the kids for a couple of hours at least.
- Handout art sets and travel journals. You’d love your children to be creative on the road trip. It is really going to help everybody to have a good time. There are so many creative ideas of work out there and if you have a travel journal for all the children, they can write a diary entry and take pictures or draw pictures of everywhere that you go along the way.
- Play it being Centre. You could wrap up quite a few small gifts, one per hour per child, and hand them out so that every hour they get a surprise. You could put some rules in place, so that those who don’t ask for a snack in the next hour will get a prize, or those who don’t bicker with siblings will get a prize. Surprise toys in blind packs can be really fun, and the bees can create some excellent conversations during the trip.
- Let the kids choose a toy. Allow each of your children to pack their own activities. From your own craft and coloring to magnetic stickers and wiping boards, there is so much they can do. Some kids might prefer dollars or action figures to make up their own games while others may want their favorite soft animals. Giving your children some control over this will make for a much calmer trip.
- Take a photo and every new location. With every new state Sino landmark, snap a photo of the whole family. Get the kids and even the dogs involved. When you get home, create a road trip Photobook to document the memories that you made together. There are so many different ways you can do this, and you could even put your most favorite photographs onto a canvas and up on the wall. Creating a gallery wall of all of your favorite pictures from your vacations is going to keep you busy.