Car Rides & Kids

When I realized that our summer travels to Florida and Colorado meant a lot of time in the car (16 hours round trip to the beach, 40 hours round trip to the mountains), I began stowing away little entertaining items for our trip. At yard sales, consignment sales, etc, I found little portable goodies and small toys to pass the time.

Let me back up...we do have a DVD player, but I like to wait until the hair-pulling-out-stage to turn to electronics. So I borrowed movies from friends and loaded up, but was hoping to watch very little tv. (We watched 6 movies. 3 on the 20 hour ride to Colorado, 3 on the 20 hour ride home.)

Here are some of the things that kept them busy!
*Books on CD from the library
*Surprise Ink Books, similar to this (These were the hit!)
*Sticker Books
*Hid stickers throughout magazines and have the kids search for them
*2 of those magnetic moustache thingies (Thanks Yolanda!)
*2 Cheap Target Harmonicas (also a hit. go figure.)
*Crayons
*a few Jumbo Push Pops (they last a long time) and other snacks
*Travel Bingo (They were too young. This was a flop.)
*An I Spy Travel Toy that I bought a few years ago, like this one
*And last of all, My Fun Book (pictured above): I made one for each kid, which included a map of the US which highlighted our travels, Coloring Pages, Writing & Math Pages, Mazes, Find the Picture, Dot-to-Dot Games, travel scavenger hunts and more! It wasn't fancy, but kept them entertained for a while!

Here are some other tip pages for traveling with kids: Here, Here,Here or Here. Do you have any tips for traveling with kids?