Family Trip Deals

This is Part 3 in a Series of 4. For Part I: Packing, click here. For Part II: Traveling By Plane, click here.

PART III: ON THE ROAD

Ideas for making those car trips memorable in the very best way, contributed by parents who learned from experience.

1. WINDOW AS CANVAS If you don’t mind wiping the windows, let the kids use dry-erase markers to color pictures. My kids love to play tic-tac-toe. A baby wipe clears it up fast — makes the kids great travelers. — allkellyp

2. FOR VERY YOUNG ONES This is how we survived a long car trip with our 4-year-old son and high-energy toddler daughter:
* We picked up two clipboards at the dollar store to draw on. We tore pages out of coloring books and brought plain white paper. I let them use crayons - not as messy as markers.
* I brought along some favorite lost and forgotten figurines I’d dug out of the bottom of the toy box. It was fun and quiet. — mufasasmistress

3. TAPES & ZIPLOCS We have had success with lap desks for coloring, individual snacks for each child packed in their own Ziploc snack bags, and lots of sing-along tapes. — Rebekah

4. WIRED FOR PLAY We borrowed a small tv/vcr and hooked it up in our van so the kids could watch movies. They each brought headphones and tapes or CDs they liked. I got a couple of books on tape for my youngest that he really liked to listen to. The oldest brought cards that he played with whoever was sitting in the back with him at the time. I also packed a Frisbee, ball and gloves, and some bubbles in an easy-to-get-to place, so when we stopped at a rest area we could all get a little exercise. — Juanese

5. BOOKS & ACTIVITY BAGS First we make a trip to the library and each kid picks out a couple of books for the ride. Our two kids (8 & 10) each have an activity bag that straps onto the seat in front of them. They are stocked with their papers for drawing, activity books, and colored pencils (crayons melt in hot cars). We have a family activity bag with small magnetic games like checkers, Chinese checkers, etc. — heybambi

6. MODEL MAGIC We take a couple of packages of multi-colored pipe cleaners and several packages of Crayola Model Magic. I love Model Magic. It sticks to itself but not to the interior of the car or the kids’ clothes, it doesn’t blend unless the kids make it blend, the kids make their creations and we clean out the van each evening and then they start again. Any little crumbles can just be brushed out or vacuumed away. I used to distribute the pipe cleaners to avoid arguements but now they can handle it themselves and are quiet for long lengths of time. — Tammy

7. NIGHTTIME TRAVEL Even if it is a baby toy, kids have fun with ANYTHING that lights up. Our dollar store has neon glow bracelets and sticks (the kind you’d purchase at an amusement park or nighttime parade) that kids can connect and make bracelets or necklaces out of. Glow-in-the-dark star stickers are fun to get out too. Have them use their mini-flashlights on them to get them to shine. They can stick them above their seat in the car (if they are big enough), or you can have them do it before it gets dark when stopping for gasoline or something quick. — mufasasmistress

8. TRAVEL JOURNALS Our sons, now 9 and 6, have travel journals I started for them in a 3-prong folder. I print off info — state bird, state flag, state capital — on the states we will be vacationing in (and also driving through) from state Web sites. I also print out coloring pages from free Web sites on subjects having to do with those states (a moose for Maine, seashells for the beach). And to stop the dreaded “Are we there yet?” I print out a map of our route and highlight the roads, marking off the parts as we complete them. I then take all of the printables, add a few sheets of lined paper, and start each new section of the journal with “Our Trip to … Summer 2003.” Then the kids add what time we left, where we stopped, what we saw on the way, etc. They now have a collection of memories in one folder of all our trips. — msipley

9. TRAVEL BINGO I’ve seen auto bingo boards for sale, but I just make them myself and get the kids to help out. — terpntime

10. SMALL SURPRISES My sister, who used to travel a lot with her military family, prepared small gifts along the way to keep the children occupied. She would wrap them and tell her boys they would receive a gift if they were behaved until the next stop. — terpntime

11. CAR LICENSE GAME Play the car license game with them. Older kids can identify the states, and younger ones can look for the different oolors. — Emily

12. MAD LIBS We just finished a trip with a 6- and 8-year-old. The big hit of the trip was Mad Libs. The kids took turns filling in the answers and loved reading the funny stories. — 40sporty

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