How to Entertain Children of All Ages on a Road Trip

We do a lot of road trips with our kids. Over the years, we have learned many ways to cope with spending hours in the car with children. It’s all about preparation before you leave. Our kids are often excited to start a road trip because they know that there are fun things ahead. Currently, our children are 17, 8, and 2 years old. This summer I took a trip with our kids and a family member who is 13 years old so I hit every age range. It was because of that trip that I decided I needed to write this post. I had so many questions and crazy looks when people found out that I was going on a road trip with four kids by myself.

Disclaimer: I am not a crafty person. I make most of the games and projects that we use while on the road. These are not beautiful games with perfect pictures. I don’t sweat the small stuff. If a line isn’t perfect, I don’t care. The point of these projects is to keep kids occupied and parents sane.

Project 1 

What You Need:

• A Basic Clipboard for Each Kid (I bought ours at the Dollar Tree for $1 each)
• Stickers (Dollar Tree & Leftovers from other projects)

The first project during our trip is to decorate our clipboards. Each kid gets their clipboard. If I have packs of stickers with multiple sheets, then each kid gets a sheet. (Side note: A parent or older child should hold onto a toddler’s stickers and only give them one sheet at a time.) They take a few minutes to look these over so that they can plan their overall design for their board. Then we pass around the books or single sheets of stickers that don’t have duplicates. I randomly pick a person to start each book or sheet with. They pick one sticker to add to their board and pass it on. The stickers travel around our car counter-clockwise until they are gone or everybody (or everybody except one) passes. If one person still wants that book or sheet, then they can keep it in their stack with their other sticker sheets. If nobody wants them anymore then they go into the box/bag in the front of activities for later. (Usually, these go to the toddler with plain paper or a coloring page to pass the time when she started getting bored.) We only have one going around the car at a time and I always pick another person to start each time. The kids work on putting their stickers from their personal stack on their board while they wait for the stickers to come around. When everybody is done with their boards, they pass them around one by one so we can all admire their work.

Est. time: 30 minutes to 1.5 hours depending on the children and the stickers (Smaller stickers take more time to decorate with than large ones. My kids wanted them to be really pretty and spent an hour and a half.)

Project 2 

What You Need:

• Window Clings

On our last trip, we used one pack of Hello Kitty window clings I bought at the Dollar Tree. The big kids all had a window seat. They passed the clings around and each picked out one to put on their window. They kept passing them until they were gone. Each kid ended up with 3 clings. Octavia, 2 years old, enjoyed watching them put them on the windows.

Est. time: 20 minutes

Project 3

What You Need:

• Plain Printer Paper
• Black Marker/Pen
• Ruler or Something with a Straight Edge

Use a ruler or flat edge to make 6 lines vertically and horizontally to create 25 boxes. Label the center with a free space and all the rest of the squares with license plates that you may see on your trip. On our trip to Florida, I chose places that we were likely to see and ones that were going to be harder to find to keep things interesting. Each board should be different but have some in common. They should have the same mix of easy and hard spaces. We have a rule that you have to shout out every new plate you see to keep things fair. They won a small prize for getting Bingo first and another prize for finding them all. My kids are competitive so they all really wanted to win.

Est. time: Side Game until somebody wins

Project 4

What You Need:

• Plain Printer Paper
• Black Marker/Pen
• Ruler or Something with a Straight Edge

Use the ruler or flat edge to make 6 lines vertically and horizontally to make 25 boxes. Label each box with something you may see from the window of the car. The kids cross off the box when they find the item. The first person to find all of them wins a small prize. You could draw pictures for smaller children or write a list to cross off if you prefer. We have done all three.

Est. time: Until somebody wins, Depends on how hard the items are to find

Project 5

What You Need:

• Plain White printer paper or Lined paper
• A Black Pen or Marker

I prefer to do this on plain paper because I think it looks more like a game and less like school work. I made 26 lines and put a letter of the alphabet at the beginning of each of them. The kids have to find a sign that has a word that begins with each letter. They can be street signs, billboards, restaurants, or anything else as long as they read it on a sign. This is a lot of fun and it’s amusing to see the words they come up with. There is a small prize for whoever gets them all first.

Est. time: Until somebody wins

Project 6

What You Need:

• Small Paper Bags (I used a pack of brown paper lunch sacks)
• Small Toys, Non-messy Crafts, Snacks, Games, etc.

I started by raiding our craft/toy closet. I picked out some toys for Octavia to play with that were fun but not her favorite toys. I took out any non-messy crafts that I had available. I picked out a couple books that Isabella hadn’t read yet because she is a big reader and doesn’t get carsick. Next, I went to the Dollar Tree to pick out goodies. Small art kits, crossword puzzles, snacks, and toys are perfect. These were the bulk of the items used. I bought a large dot-to-dot book at Michael’s and two Imagine Ink books from Amazon/Target.

Sadly, I didn’t take a picture of these. I laid out all the items I had and then separated them out into bags that made sense. I labeled the bags with numbers and a quick note about when to open them. Our oldest daughter was in charge of getting the bags out at the right times. This made the whole thing more exciting. They were like little gifts every hour or two. The first one was just labeled #1 and was to be opened after they decorated their clipboards and put up their window clings. The notes on the bags would be things like “Can be opened after lunch but not too close to dinner” because this bag contained a snack. One bag held a small toy for Octavia, a handheld pinball game, a dress-up doll, and a paddle board with a ball attached. The big girls took ten minute turns with the items. One bag had only a bag of Buggles in it. The girls had a blast playing with/eating them. The items in those bags would not have been near as exciting if I had just given them all to them in a bag at the beginning of the trip. They would have been bored by lunch on day 1. Instead, those items kept them occupied for the entire trip & the bags they didn’t finish were used on the way home.

A little advance preparation got us through this last road trip with minimal whining. These don’t cost a fortune and your kids will enjoy the trip more. They will spend more time having fun together and making memories which is what family travel is all about.

Happy Travels!