We are currently on a family trip to visit relatives, so the “anywhere we happen to be” in this website’s byline definitely applies to our family right now! In order to get here, we had quite a long drive in the car. I did not want the kids to spend all of that time playing on Gameboys or watching a travel TV, so I had to come up with plenty of interesting & educational activities to do in the car. Since the school year is winding down for most of us, and you may be planning a family trip soon, I thought I would share the ideas I found with you.
- We brought stories on CD to listen to. I found a few at my local library and I also found some free downloadable stories online, including lots of Robert Munsch books read by the author! You can download these and burn them onto a CD to take with you in the car. You could also record some of yourself reading your children’s favorite books.
- I bought several MadLibs books from my local dollar store. These are great because they review parts of speech, are super-fun, and are something we can all do together – even the driver!
- We made activity folders for each child. I found printable games & activities online, including: tic-tac-toe boards, hangman, Battleship, the dot game (where you draw lines connecting dots until you close in a box and initial it), a few mazes and word finds, hidden pictures and what’s wrong with the picture activities, and two different travel bingos. I printed a copy of each for each child. I bought a colored 3-prong folder for each child, and they each drew a picture and wrote their name on the cover. I also bought a pack of clear plastic page protectors and a pack of dry erase markers. We filled the folders with page protectors, loaded the printables in them, and viola! Re-usable activity folders for the car!
- I bought a travel Connect Four game at the dollar store, as well as a fuzzy black coloring poster with markers for each child. You can find coloring books, card games & flashcards, travel-sized games, little figures and cars to play with, stickers and blank journals to use as sticker books . . . all kinds of travel ideas at the dollar store!
- I brought along a US map that has interstates on it; and I also printed out a map of our route for each child, so they can follow along our journey when they so desire. Besides following along on the map, we were able to quiz each other with geography questions!
You can find great travel activities for kids at Family Fun and Mom’s Minivan. You can find the Robert Munsch downloadable stories at Robert’s website.
What do you do to keep the kids busy and still learning on your family trips?
Tanya is a happy homeschooling mom to three children, and has been homeschooling for over a decade. When she’s not coming up with educational activities for the kideos, she’s in the kitchen cooking and sharing her recipes on Knoxville Examiner.
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Love your ideas! I also purchase a disposable camera for each of my children so they can snap their own pictures along the way. It’s always interesting to see what catches their eye! After a trip to the Statue of Liberty I was surprised to see that my son didn’t take one picture of us at the Statue or Ellis Island but had plenty of pictures of us stuck in traffic! LOL I also give my kids a journal to record of trip with a few ideas to get them going. What was most memorable, most disappointing, etc. Most disappointing may seem an odd choice but one time the kids and I were leaving Ohio to meet my husband in Virginia. On the way, I actually got pulled over because I’d forgotten to renew my tags (how on earth i forgot I have no idea) anyway, after that it turned out that we weren’t able to leave that day as planned but had to turn around and go home to buy the tags. My kids were really disappointed, but they were excited to have something to write in their journal!:) Go figure!
.-= Tonya´s last blog ..My Daughter, the Aspiring Journalist =-.
great ideas! I do all these things too! I always include worksheets/games/etc about each state we’ll be going through. For our upcoming adventure I found state mammal, bird, and flower coloring pages for my 4 year old and state word finds, crosswords, and fill in the blanks for my 6 year old. We also have a set of flip cards that have state facts that only come out on the road!
My son also likes to write stories. We recently went to St. Augustine, FL and he made notes on post-it notes and stuck them to the window, then used his notes on the way home to write a story about our trip.
.-= Annie´s last blog ..Focus =-.
Sticker pages! And then more stickers. We also like the Color Wonder books because mine are still at the occasional try to color on the car stage. You’d think they’d have outgrown it, but no.
Tag Readers from Leap Frog, those are great because they practice reading comprehension skills, and this year we’re adding the Leapster into the mix.
.-= Ticia´s last blog ..Homemade explosives, okay not exactly =-.
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