There is something very nostalgic about taking a cross-country road trip. Mom & Dad having great conversations while the kids are singing in the backseat. Eating picnic lunches at quaint roadside parks. Everyone smiling and playing silly car games, like i Spy and the Telephone game.
What?
That doesn’t really happen??
Ok – We will be on the road for close to 50 hours this summer and to avoid the constant, “Mom, she’s touching me!” and “When are we going to get there???”, I’ve come up with a list of different things for us to do in the car on our road trip:
~ Reading the Harry Potter series out loud. And each child will join in on the reading. (getting some reading minutes in- bonus!)
~ Taking a picture in front of each state sign
~ New Books!! There is nothing my kids love more than being surprised with a few new books, so I grabbed a few new titles from the local Half-Price Books.
~ License Plate Map – For each different state license plate the kids see, they get to color in that state on a map.
~ Watching Planet Earth – remember that dvd series you just had to get the kids last Christmas but never found time to watch all 13 hours of it? What better time to watch it than now???
~ Audio Books – We downloaded a few kid-friendly Audio books from our local library onto our iPhones & iPods – now the kids can listen to their own books too.
~ Journals – Each child is presented with a new, clean journal as we start our trip. My daughter loves to document the journey, while my son likes to doodle or play word games in it. If they claim they are “bored” I whip out a few math problems or give them a writing prompt to create some thoughts.
~ Digital Camera Scavenger Hunt – The kids are given a list of 20 things at the beginning of the trip that they should keep their eye out for on the drive – each worth different points – the idea is to have easy & hard ones, the more creative, the better.
~ Family Trivia – My hubby & I have come up with a series of trivia questions about all of our relatives – “Which famous gun-fighter is Grandpa Smith related to?” “Which Aunt sky-dived on her 50th Birthday?” A great way for the kids to learn more about their relatives!
~ Personalized CDs – I have made a cd for each child with all their favorite songs. We will bring them out throughout the drive and allow them a chance to “guess” each song as we play it.
With these ideas, and more…I better never hear, “are we there yet mom?”!!!
These are awesome ideas!
Great ideas! Of course I adore the journalling one.
Fantastic ideas! And I live just outside Chicago so I’ll, for sure, be referring to your site! Can you believe we live 20 minutes from downtown and the kids have never been to one of the museums, except on school field trips??? Yikes…
Smart, smart, smart!
Fun ideas! My family likes to play 20+ questions on trips using something from our home. It has to be visible (not in a cabinet or closet) but nothing else is off limits. It has been from the little ribbon on a plate to large pieces of furniture. My now adult child still likes to get in the game.
Where were your great ideas about 30 years ago when I was taking cross-country road trips with my family?! We were forced to listen to my parents sing, and they were forced to listen to us yelling, “Mom, she’s breathing on my side of the car!!” Becca, you have such great ideas! I just can’t wait to hear Ian’s interpretation of his Harry Potter chapters! 🙂