Fun Driving Activities for Younger Children

Dia Minha · #1 07-26-2007, 04:09 PM

Ok, I think I am pretty much set with books on tape and movies for the drive to Oregon next week. However, I know that the children will not want to do books and movies the entire time. I could really use some ideas for inbetween times.

For my 7 and 9 year olds I have a fun math book and several Mad Libs. However, these would not work for my middle two. So I need some fun car games for a 3 and 5 year old. Any suggestions on how to cope with a one year old on such a long drive would very much be appreciated as well.

Thanks, Dia

**5ft Diva** · #2 07-26-2007, 04:15 PM

I used to have some really good ideas at one point but I can't for the life of me think of any now. I'll work on it and let you know. Good luck!

runamyrun · #3 07-26-2007, 04:57 PM

We didn't have our youngest with us when we went to Disneyland, but here are some of the things I did for my other kids. I made a trip to Dollar Tree right before our trip. I bought a bunch of cheap little prizes, that they could play with in the car. I bought them special coloring books and crayons. Several of the things I wrapped up like little presents. Then every half hour or hour, they could get a new present out of their bag. My ds can read and write, so I brought activity pages for him and put them in page protectors. He would write on the page protector with a marker, and then when he was done, we could wipe it off and reuse it. Before the trip I also went to the D.I. and bought clipboards for both of them. Then they had a hard surface to color or do activities on. I also had special little snacks. Some of the prizes I brought were pipe cleaners. You can make people or animals or bracelets out of these. They also love stickers. My dd loves anything pretty, so she has a zip up purse that came with a little comb, bracelet and ring. My ds has a set of animals. Dollar Tree also had board puzzles of animals. My kids loved those. They also have plastic slinkies. I don't know what they do with them, but they like them. Just be prepared to untangle them. Each child has their own bag (similar to our Primary bags) to keep their own activities in. I let them decorate their bags with puffy paint, and they wrote their name on it. I hope this gives you some ideas!

smed · #4 07-26-2007, 09:00 PM

Great idea's RAR! Growing up when we would go on road trips my mom did about the same thing. Only before we could open the present we had to do one of the following.

1-count so many red trucks (you could change the color and vehicle discription for each kid). as we got older we had to find the vehicles going in the oposite direction as we were going.
2- Try to get a semi to honk it's horn.
3- look for the alphabet on signs that we passed. A different letter on a different sign. not the same sign, that would be cheating.
4- sing lyrics to a favorite song.
5- Say something nice about everyone in the car.

The list is quite endless, alot of times the rules changed, depending on what kind of area you were in. This was alot of fun and took time so we wouldn't keep asking "ARE WE THERE YET!"

Hope this helps, We also got our favorite kind of candy besides things to play or draw with.

Dia Minha · #5 07-28-2007, 06:10 PM

Thanks for all your ideas. The day I posted this I was at Macey's and found a whole assortment of travel games for a dollar. I remembered what RAR said about wrapping them up and I thought those would be fun. I figure they can play with them until they loose the pieces (which I know they will) and then open another one. They should last for about hour each. That's pretty good.

Smed I love the idea of making them work for their prizes. It's like a game within a game. I think my children would love that.

I also found this website: [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] . It has a ton of game ideas if anyone else is interested.

Dia

smed · #6 07-30-2007, 02:10 PM

Dh thanks for the web site on traveling games. I put it in my favorite's so when I have more time I can really look at it. We are always traveling to grandma's or grandpa's house and my kids get really tired of the long 45min. drive. this may help with alot of the "Are we there yet" attitutude! so THanks.