Our First Real Car Trip

My kids have never been in the car for longer than 2 hours at a time- 4 hours total for one day.  Almost all of our family lives in AZ. So doing a 6 hour car ride to San Diego, then doing it again a few days later, was a big first for us as a family.

I had way too much fun looking up car trip ideas on pinterest.

I kept 3 cookie sheets in the pocket behind my seat to use as tables on their laps for coloring (my girls both did this for hours on the trip), put some magnets on the back of puzzles, magnet dolls, magnet letters you name it!  I bought each kid a couple of new coloring books at the dollar store.

Olly sat in the back the whole trip and hardly needed any entertainment at all.  When we would stop I'd give him a few more snacks and a car and some books and he was good for another couple hours.  I love this boy!  He napped the most too since he didn't have his sisters bugging him.

Matt did all the driving.  I offered to trade but he'd rather drive and let me entertain the kids!

Marti, my wonderful sister, flew to California and then drove back with us.  It was fun to have her along for the ride.  She slept way more than my kids!  We brought small pillows and blankets and dressed them warm but they only took a few short naps.

I used an empty wipe container for snacks.  The first (and pretty much only) time they've had snacks in the new car.  Each kid had their own and I told them this was all their snacks for the trip.  I did bring some to stock up on the way back but they didn't need it.  They had crackers, fruit snacks, craisens, grapes, granola bars... I did have some regulation because I had to open some packages for them- when they were done the trash went back in the container and then we emptied it out at the next stop so we didn't have to pass snacks or trash back and forth.  They each had a water bottle as well- but we tried to dehydrate them!

Crayons melt, markers are messy, so colored pencils again in a wipie container so they didn't roll around worked really well.

I printed off a picture of a mini van and Charlotte colored it.  Then I put up a ribbon on the ceiling with 6 marks on it- one for each hour of the trip one direction and cut holes in the van and threaded it on the ribbon.  Each hour we would move the van and they could switch activities.  If they got bored sooner I told them they could look at their book bags or look out the window.  That way we wouldn't use up the activities too fast.  I also had a couple of dollar store prizes wrapped up to give them on the hour.  I think it cut down on the asking to do something new and asking if we were there yet since they could visually see how much longer.  It was hard to keep it up- the thing fell down a lot.

White boards to color, a new  DVD from the library (we borrowed a DVD player and never used it!  I was so proud of us!).  ABC paper plate game- they have to look for the letters on signs or licence plates and fold it down- I made one with shapes for Abby and Olly but they didn't use it.

I checked out a lot of books on CD.  The girls loved these.  We found them a little annoying but it was a nice break once in a while to put one in and let them turn the pages together.

We bought glow sticks too.  When it got dark we got them out and they had a blast with them and they were able to look at books for longer.  I think they would be better in the winter because by the time we got them out it was bedtime but they didn't go to sleep because they had the cool glow sticks.  Live and learn.

Threading cards, letter game, small puzzles to do on the cookie sheets.

I was pretty proud of myself.  The activities made the road trip much more fun.  I planned more than I needed and I am a fan of just letting kids be bored too but some actives made it more pleasant for everyone.  What are your favorite car games/ ways to pass the time on a long trip?  I remember taking lots of naps on road trips...