Activities For A Long Car Trip?

We are moving across the country at the end of this month and will be driving with James and John who are 2 and Greg who is six months. The twins are super active and I was wondering if anyone had good ideas of how to keep them happy in the car while they are stuck in their car seats for long periods at a time. Thanks so much, Adele

 

DVD player with their fav movies /shows. Magna doodle and aquadoodle. Maybe the soft tray that attaches to many carseats so they can color draw w ith crayons! Good luck!!!

 

Buy a couple of 10-packs of various hot wheels, and when they start to get bored and fidgety, give them each a new car, one at a time. This saved us on a 2-day drive when our son was 2. They were all trucks, but all different kinds of trucks.

Here is a great website for car trip activities, with a link to their page specific to toddlers:
http://www.momsminivan.com/toddlers.html

 

We have done many driving trips and luckily our munchkins have always done really well. Starting around 2, I let them each have a backpack to fill up with different coloring/activity books, crayons and small toys of their choice. The magna doodles really keep their attention for long stretches. I do sort of the same thing as mentioned previously and buy an assortment of new/cheap toys to give them to keep them occupied also. We bring along our portable DVD players, but don't use them until they are really antsy. Yours may be too young still, but the past few trips mine have really enjoyed playing the I Spy game & I printed a bunch of pages with small roadside type pictures and they had to circle things as they found them - boy that was good for half the trip at least

Good luck with your trip and your move!

 

I Spy is a big one here. We've been doing this with the girls for a while. You can also bring magnets and a cookie tray that they can play with. Crayola makes crayons that are flat on one side so they don't roll off the table (Staples carries them). You could get those and an activity tray. The craft stores here also have Magic Pen books that use a special marker to color in the pictures (kind of like color wonder). And, we always let them bring stuffed animals. We also have a VCR in the car and keep it stocked with kid tapes. And, kids CD's for a sing-along.

 

There is a fantastic book called "The Toddlers Busy Book" by Trish Kuffner that has all kinds of activities for keeping the kiddos occupied. Anything from taking them on car trips to rany day play, to every day play. I'll look up some of the travel games and post some for you.

(Edited to add Here are some I found: Sandpaper Play - This is a clean, quiet activity that travels well. Store sandpaper and yarn in a Ziploc bag and have it handy for a long car ride or whenever you need something quick for your child to do. Need: course sandpaper, yarn in various colors Cut various colors of yarn into different lengths. Show your toddler how the yarn sticks to the sandpaper. She will enjoy creating a design, pulling it off, and starting over again.

Toddler Brag Book: This little homemade photo album slips easily into a diaper bag and comes in handy during long car rides or waits in a restaurant or doctors office. Need: Photos of friends, family, pets, and your toddler, Construction paper, Glue, Clear contact paper, Scissors, Hole punch, Ribbon Glue photos of your child and her friends, family, and pets to pieces of construction paper. Cover them with clear contact paper and cut to size, leaving a border of a least 1/2 inch around the photo. Punch two holes in the left margin of each page. Thread ribbon through the holes to make a "brag book". Your child will enjoy looking at this over and over. If you like, use a small store-bought photo album (one photo per page) instead of making one with construction and contact paper.

Felt Faces: Need: Cardboard, Scissors, Felt, Glue, Pen or marker, Ziploc bag, diaper-wipe container, or small shoebox for storage Cut several oval shapes out of cardboard. Trace around these shapes on pieces of felt (since these will be faces, felt in a variety of skin colors is desirable, but brightly colored felt will work, too). Cut out the felt shapes you have traced and glue them to the cardboard ovals. Cut additional facial features from the felt in a variety of colors. These features should include eyes, noses, mouths (smiling and frowning), ears (with and without earrings, if you like), and hair. Older children may enjoy using additional features such as eyebrows, eyeglasses, mustaches, and so on. Place the felt pieces (oval face shapes and facial features) in a Ziploc bag, empty diaper-wipe container, or small shoe-box. This makes a clean and quiet take-along game to play in the car or while you're waiting.

 

I second the dvd player(We use my laptop. I would buy some new movies and put them up until the trip {my suggestions: happy feet, charlotte's web , baby enstien's my first signs}). Make sure you bring lots of snacks and make frequent stops to let them get out and strech their legs. Familar toys or blankets are good things to take along. If you and dh can stand it my girls really like our backyardagains soundtrack cd it keeps them pretty happy in the car(they try to sing along and bounce to the beat). Tomorrow we are going on a 3 hour car trip so I can totally understand.

 

Wow, you guys are GREAT!!!!! These are all wonderful ideas that will really help us. Thanks so much. -Adele

 

All of these are GREAT ideas! I looked at the website link above and like the idea to take paper bags and put a small snack and a small toy in each one to hand to them periodically. Little Surpirse Sacks!! We do the DVD a lot...a few full length movies goes a LONG ways on long trips! We also snack a lot (new snacks they've never seen before) and have several bags with toys and activities such as aqua-doodles, quite books (cloth books with lacing, matching, buttons, zippers etc) and dolls (for girls) that they only get to play with occasionally so it's not boring to them. I have a lot of felt boards/books from THIS website. We bought them locally though. Take some time to prepare. You got some great deas to start here!!

 

How do you choose tires for such long trips? And what do you do if you'll be in areas with different weather conditions, for example. I'm just planning my first such road trip, and I want to be clear about all the nuances beforehand.

 

I don't think that traveling in the same country, you will find yourself in both rain and snow, heat and cold. Even if there are some weather changes, they will be minor. Then there are off-season quality tires, a wide selection of which are available at the tire shop. I don't think it's worth getting all worked up about. But if you're really worried, you can do as I did. I usually send links to different tires to a specialist at my auto shop before I buy, and he tells me what would be the best buy.