How to Entertain Kids While Driving
"Are we there yet?" is such an oft-heard phrase from anyone traveling with children that someone finally used it as the title of a road-trip movie. While the urge to use a DVD player or portable video game system can be quite strong -- especially if such a system is already installed in the vehicle -- there are other ways to entertain your children while tootling down the highway. Whether running errands around town or driving across the country, there are many simple things that you can do to keep both yourself and the children sane while in transit.
Other People Are Reading
Instructions
-
-
1
Set rules for travel. While rules do not entertain children, they help keep them safe and can help keep them from causing problems. Include rules about seating arrangements, sharing toys or games, bathroom breaks, safety at rest stops and other items pertinent to your trip.
-
2
Sing with the kids. Reach back into your memory banks and pull out your favorite campfire songs from your marshmallow-roasting days, or play the soundtrack to a movie that you all love. Allow children to choose songs or CDs and make sure you get to choose some too.
-
-
3
Play interactive games that have to do with your surroundings. The Alphabet Game challenges players to find items in the landscape or letters on license plates that begin with the sequential letters of the alphabet, while the License Plate Game tasks players with finding a license plate from every state.
-
4
Get the children involved in the trip. Tell them about your trip, let them take pictures, encourage them to ask questions, let them choose a stop or tell you what they know about where you are going. Consider allowing them to act as navigator and keep you on pace with a map, or have them keep journals about your journey. Even travels around town can require navigation or provide entertaining anecdotes to record.
-
5
Be prepared. Have a small stash of travel-sized versions of their favorite games, crayons, printed activities, pens and hardbound journals, or sheets of paper stapled together along the edges. Keep this well-stocked.
-
6
Take breaks. Even the most entertained of children can only sit in a car for so long. Make sure you take enough stops so that everyone can stretch and use the facilities. If you have extra time in your travels, stop at interesting spots to break up the monotony of driving.
-
7
Talk to your kids. For some families, time in a vehicle is their only time all together, so use that to your advantage and talk to your kids about school, plans they have, things they want to do, their friends, their interests, or other things that you bring up or they want to ask of you.
-
8
Let the kids be. Some children are so inundated with media, family and activities that they do not get much time to themselves. Allow children to sit in their seats or gaze out the window, if that's what they want to do.
-
1
Tips & Warnings
Be aware of which toys or activities you pack for the car. Small pieces can get easily lost and noisy toys that are muffled between rooms in a house can quickly become annoying in the enclosed space of a car.
References
Resources
- Photo Credit Jupiterimages/Pixland/Getty Images
