road trip

Keeping a toddler entertained in the car for under $25 (screen-free).

My husband likes road trips.  They’re not my fave.  But I can get on board with the goal to keep family travel as inexpensive as possible.  So we do road trips.  Yes, even road trips with toddlers on board.

Despite the many benefits of traveling by car (cost being the most compelling for me), I find it difficult to balance my unyielding commitment to limited screen-time with the sheer amount of time spent in an enclosed space that accompanies car travel.  Especially when it comes to toddlers.  Let’s face it, those guys were not designed to be cooped up.  (Although, admittedly, the very WORST age for car travel is the recently potty-trained, in my opinion).

Our family recently drove to the Oregon Coast for spring break.  This summer, we will tackle a 3 1/2 weeklong adventure from sea to shining sea.  Almost.  The task of keeping the kids entertained will prove formidable, at best.  Especially when it comes to the terrible two-year-old.

So our drive to Oregon (totaling 20 hours in the car, roundtrip) served as a sort of practice run for the final test of my road-tripping savvy this upcoming summer.  Here’s what I put together to keep my son from bugging me entertained in the car:

  1.  Travel binder.  I resurrected an old school binder to house the multiple activities I came up with to keep Jack busy.  I kept them contained individually in several zipper pouches (purchased at none other than the dollar store).   $5

    If you would rather have the ease of purchasing them online, here are good alternatives you can buy on Amazon.    Three-Ring Zipper Pouches (I like these pouches because they are 8.5X11 inches) and Zipper Binder

  2. Sticker fun.  My son really loves letters, so he enjoyed attaching alphabet stickers to the corresponding letter on an alphabet printable I found online, printed out and laminated.  Kept him engaged for 45 minutes straight.  Pretty impressive. Your kid might like sorting by color, or shape, or he/she may just stick them to his/her face or carseat, as my son did after he had tired of the mental stimulation of sorting.  Either way, here are a few printables to choose from.  And here are some stickers to go with them.  $1 per sheet of stickers or $5 total Or, if you want to minimize prep time, feel free to buy this sticker book.  My daughters loved it for road trips when they were younger (ages 3-6, that is).
  3. Magnetic drawing board.  No mess.  No fuss.  I got mine at the dollar store, but the drawback to that is that the “pen” isn’t attached so you run the risk of it getting lost.   $1  You can always buy one like this, if you’d rather not chance it.
  4. I Spy bag.  You can buy these on Etsy for under $15 each.  I made my own for less than $10, but because buttons come in packs of 5-8, I ended up making five and giving the rest to friends.
     They’re pretty easy to whip up (here’s the tutorial I loosely referred to) except for the card listing the items to find.  I took actual pictures of the trinkets to put together the card and that turned a relatively simple project into a tedious one.  Having said that, I think using just text would make no sense if you’re making it for a toddler.  If you want to use mine, here’s a printable (it’s a jpg, so you can resize, as needed):

    I found all of my buttons at Joann Fabric and at Buttons Galore.

  5. Playdough.  Yes, that’s right.  Playdough.  If you have a nice car or you happen to have upholstered seats that you care about, playdough is probably not your best option.  But, for people like us, who buy really old cars with leather seats, we are willing to take our chances.  And, for the record, our trip to Oregon sustained minimal mess (From playdough at least.  The snack-eating kids in the back seat were an entirely different story).  If you want to throw in a few playdough mats to inspire creativity, you can find them all over Pinterest.  I simply grabbed an old sour cream container lid for Jack to use as his “table”, provided a few containers of the store-bought sort and let him have at it.  My nine-year-old was pleased as punch that she got in on the action, too.

    $3 tops.

    The grand total (dollar store prices) of this travel binder will set you back about $24 total.

Thanks to these simple activities, a few books, a toddler playlist, long naps and a bit of screen-time (limited to hours after dark), our little mister was pretty much an angel.

For our road trip this summer, I’ll be adding in a couple more activities so stay-tuned.

(This post contains affiliate links, which means that if you purchase any of the recommended products, I will receive a small commission at no cost to you)

 

Family trips – how to get the kids involved in planning.

Research shows that the planning portion of trips gives us as much or more joy than the actual trip (or the time following the trip).  That being the case, why on earth do we let the planning fall squarely on one person’s shoulders?  (In our family, this person is always me.)  I relish in it, in fact, because it means I get to create spreadsheets like this:

I get giddy over spreadsheets.  Still, let’s share the joy with our children for heaven’s sake!

They can participate in the planning so that they have something to look forward to.  That way, they refrain from the inevitable “what are we doing today, mom?” question that makes them seem oh, so entitled.

I feel like I’ve been hogging all the joy of anticipation and have begun including my kids in the trip prep in recent years.  They helped prep camping meals for last year’s vacation.  The year before, they researched places we could go, how much they cost, and then voted on their favorites.  We factored in their votes and considered the budget to decide on which attractions and sites we’d visit.

My husband even gets in on the action now.  He hits up his best friend Yelp to choose the best restaurants for our select few occasions dining out.  There’s nothing like dropping some good cash on a crappy restaurant when there’s so much to choose from.  He likes to eat so he does his homework.

This year’s family vacation is going to be epic.  Like three weeks epic.  I’m part ecstatic, part terrified.  I’ve done most of my research already and have mapped out where we’re going to stay, how long it takes to get from point A to point B, and crafted a basic budget (see above spreadsheet).

Now it’s time to get the kids involved.  Where to begin?

How to get the kids involved in planning family trips:

  1.  Give them a list of the places you are going.  Let them pick one or two locations on your list and research the best things to do in the area.  Make sure they record the cost and time required for each activity so you can factor that into a decision on whether or not you visit that particular attraction/site.
  2. Let them know who you will be visiting and/or famous people who lived in the places on your list.  Invite them to find out about those people so that they have a connection with them in advance.  Your kids will thank you when you drop in on Great Aunt Ida and they can actually strike up a meaningful conversation with her instead of watching the clock.  Alternatively, if you are in Cambridge, MA touring Longfellow’s house, it won’t hurt for them to have some stories shored up in their little brains so they can make meaningful connections.
  3. Give them a list of books that relate to the places you’re visiting.  They can choose a few from the list and read them during the months/weeks leading up to your trip.  Add a bit of interest by encouraging them to record some highlights from these books so that others can benefit from their reading.
  4. If food is an interest for them, let the kids know on which occasions you will be eating out and challenge them to find the highest-rated (within budget) restaurants within that location.  They’ll feel more satisfaction in a meal for which they played a decision-making role.
  5. Let them organize a playlist(or two) for your time on the road.  This is a big one for me.  I LOVE music but can’t seem to squeeze in the time to construct playlists.  The kids will totally dig this.  Especially since we’ll be spending close to eighty hours in the car so they’ll be particularly motivated to avoid having to listen to dad’s playlists on repeat.
  6. Let them pick out a few activities for the car ride (or airplane ride, as the case may be).  One of our family traditions is to take the kids to the bookstore before a road trip and let them pick out a new book to read (and add to our permanent collection).  The girls often swap books so this gives them a few good hours of entertainment in the car.  But since this particular trip ain’t no regular road trip, we’ll be adding a million other activities to our list.  Audiobooks for the whole fam, travel games, madlibs, coloring books and the like.  I’ll be outlining a budget and letting the kiddos run with it.

My hope is that by letting the littles have a hand in planning more of the details of our family trips, they will be feel more invested in the outcome.  They’ll also get to share more in the joy that comes in the anticipation.  Win for me, win for them.

Click here to access a printable (PDF) to get the kids involved in your next vacation.