Riding in Cars with Kids

 The kiddos and I headed back to see our family for Easter.  Daddy got left behind because, apparently when you're an (almost) pastor that means you work on Easter.  Who knew?!?!  ;-)

I was terrified about making the 14 hour roundtrip with the kids and no husband to help.  Two background things to know about me:

•  I grew up in a town of 400 people.  We're talking gravel roads and no traffic lights.
•  Jeremy and I have been together since before I could drive, so he's always driven us everywhere.

You can see then why a major trip on "big roads" by myself would feel daunting.

So I did what anyone does when they have a problem (or a random thought or just a really great lunch)...posted about it on facebook.  Turns out my friends are kind of geniuses...another who knew?!!?  :-P  Just kidding.  I knew.  That's why I asked them.

My friend Jealaine had an awesome idea of spreading out the car activities based on time or distance, so the kids don't do everything right away and then get bored.  Genius!  I made a map for the kids of our route, since they always like to follow along anyways.  Then I color coded towns along the way that were about an hour apart.  (I made myself a cheat sheet too so I could give them estimates if they asked how much longer until the green town).

I put together ziploc bags with different car-friendly activities in them and put color coded labels that corresponded with the map on each bag. So when we got an hour into our trip, they received the orange bags, which had alphabet match-up puzzles for Liliana and time match-up puzzles for Micah.  Make sense?

My mom had purchased these trays for the kids awhile back and they are AWESOME for long car trips.  Because we had the trays, we were able to do some things with smaller pieces.  Here's what I came up with for car activities (with many of these ideas coming from my awesome friends!)

• Simple match-up puzzles 
• Lacing cards
• Small figures (My Little Ponies for Nah-na and firemen figures for Micah)
• Finger Puppets
• Rush Hour Jr. 
• These picture Car Bingo sheets on clipboards
• Jumbo beads for stringing
• Pipecleaners
• Magnet activity sets
• Matchbox cars
• Coloring books and new boxes of crayons (Is there anything in the world better than a fresh box of crayons???)
• Dry erase boards/markers
• Look and Find books
• Homemade Wikki Stix

We also have a portable DVD player and I got some books on CD from the library (Magic Treehouse- <3 them!)  And any qualms I have about junk food go right out the window on car rides.  Somehow those little packages of Chips Ahoy go a lot farther for bribery than baggies of carrot sticks.  :-P

It went great!!!  The idea of spacing out the activities seriously helped!  And they loved having their own maps.  Zero whining.  Zero fits.  From the kids or from me...impressive, huh?  :-)

Ignore the mounds of stuff in the car.  We travel prepared!  :-P

So next time you're traveling with kids, give it a try!