Toys for the car -- long road trip!

How many times have we seen topics about this? Approximately a zillion! But we're coming up on the big holiday travel season -- and I'm taking a long road trip next week for Thanksgiving -- so I figured we could all use a refresher and some new ideas to keep the kiddos entertained on those looooog car rides.

We have a DVD player and have burned a bunch of Dora and Backyardigans episodes off our TiVo, so that's covered. Also I got travel MagnaDoodles that I will break out for the first time on the trip. Other than that, I am kind of at a loss. What are some more good things to take along in the car for 2-3 year olds?

 

My son always had his kids laptop computer (we are upgrading to a Leapster this year), his Fisher Price MP3 player, books, and the crayola mess free markers and coloring pages.

Cari

 

I keep a little basket of baby toys in between the carseats. It's stuff from when they were younger, like teethers and rattles that otherwise they wouldn't be interested in, but in the car, they think they are novel.

We're taking a long road trip at Christmas so I'm also not sure what else to bring. Maybe a basket of board books too? Keep them up front with you and pass them back every so often.

 

My kids love the little magna doodles and play with them for a LONG time!! I hope that works!!

The movies and dvd's will be good. I would go for a while without doing anything. As long as that works. Do you have good music for them? Laurie Berkner CD's are a huge hit with us! They love listening to THEIR music in the car and I like her too, so that makes it good for me. When you get sick of it, you can tell them it's your turn.

I always take a new snacky type thing with us on the airplane or whereever. Seems to keep them interested for a while!

Have a great trip!

 

I've wondered if this topic should be a sticky. It seems to come up a lot and I know I'm wondering the same thing with our 14-hour drive fast approaching We last did this at 6 months and it was a whole different story then. They slept most of the way. Not likely this time...

 

Well, Sarah was a bit younger (22 months) when I took her on the airplane, but the biggest hits were:

a mini photo album with pictures of people she knew
a bunch of sparkly gel bracelets (got them in the "party favors" section at Target)
stickers
a dog collar with a buckle (sounds silly, but they love buckling and unbuckling, and it was just the right size)
a couple of new pop-up board books

The key was really that everything was new. I also took 2 sippies (one for water, one for milk) and her lovey, which is normally never allowed outside the crib.

I think it would be great to have this be a sticky.

 

We are leaving tomorrow on a 12 hour road trip. We have the magnadoodles and I got them a couple of new toys for the road.

Thanks for the tip on some of their old toys, I will go through the toy box tonight and take some out that they haven't played with in a while. We have the DVD player and I got some new movies for them and some of their favorites.

We are going to try and stop at places for meals that they can run around and let out some energy.

 

Michaels craft store has a $1.00 section. They change it periodically but sometimes they have some great travel items that we use for long car rides, visits to relatives, and long shopping trips with mommy.

They had mini Elmo coloring books with stickers in it. (haven't seen these the last time I went but this entertained them for over hour in the car. My husband jokingly said it was the best $2.00 I ever spent)

Small notebooks for coloring, writing

Various colorbooks: farm, Hello Kitty, etc.

Colored pads of paper for drawing.

Small pencil cases to hold crayons, etc.

Sharon