In today’s post: 35 hacks for road trips with kids! How to prepare, how to stay organized, and how to keep kids occupied, plus the best snack ideas and ways to encourage good behavior in the car.
Best Road Trip Ideas for Kids
Once again, it’s road trip season. Honestly, I used to think people who packed up a bunch of kids and drove for fifteen hours to a faraway destination were completely, certifiably insane. There are times when fifteen minutes in the car with kids who won’t stop bugging each other is almost more than I can handle. However, I’ve realized that with the right preparation, family road trips can be rather less miserable than expected – maybe even fun.
All sorts of smart people have posted their favorite tips for road trips with kids online, and I’ve sorted through to find the best ones (and thrown in a few of my own). From preparing the car and organizing your supplies to packing snacks and prepping activities, this post has you covered. You’ll find links to plenty of ideas to make your road trip with kids a little less horrible and a lot more fun.
R
Road trip with kids: Prep + Get Organized
Road trip with kids: How to keep kids occupied
This is the most important part, right? I’m totally ok with kids using electronics on road trips, but mine do tend to turn into monsters if they stay plugged in for 20 hours straight, so I try to make sure they take breaks from video games and movies. Here are some great non-electronic activities for road trips with kids:
Road Trip Kit Ideas
Road Trip Printables
Best Activity Toys for Road Trips
Road Trip Snack ideas
Ways to promote good behavior
If there’s anything out there that will convince my kids not to poke each other while we’re on a road trip, I’m willing to give it a try!
Rachel says
GREAT tips! I used the presents along the way during a 3-day car trip with my 3 and 5 year old! Activity trays with sides were amazing,and we did reward tickets for good behavior to turn in for special surprises! But oh my goodness, audiobooks are a must!!! The best one BY FAR that we’ve found is “A Thicket of Takes” by A.D. Hasselbring – they sell the CD on their website, and also have the mp3s on Amazon and iTunes too I think. We did the CD, just because that’s easier for me than dealing with charging an ipod, but I have a friend who thinks the ipod was easier on their trip. I have a boy and girl, and this is a nice collection of exciting, very family-oriented stories for boys AND girls, and a pretty good age range. Upshot? No fights. They’d both listen to them all. Plus, they all teach a lesson, and the vocab was FANTASTIC. Very visual, no issues about no pictures, short enough tat I wasn’t stuck in the car for a half an hour waiting for a story to finish before I could get them out for a potty stop… And they didn’t drive me nuts. No crazy voices or obnoxious “kid” music. You can’t overlook that on a car trip. Whatever you start, you may be in for about a hundred times, so make sure it doesn’t make you crazy. (Ditto for things that the kids will fight over. You will have the same fight a hundred times.) These were awesome – they even prompted some great discussions and I was amazed at how focused they were. It was especially helpful when they were getting tired of being in the car but WOULD NOT SLEEP. Audiobooks (especially this one) were something that we could all enjoy together and made them really enjoy the trip. Instead of zoning out on the DVD player (ad yes, we did also have that just in case, but surprisingly this worked better), they were awake and active and having fun. Kind of what I’d hoped it would be like all along!!!
autumn says
why, thanks! My husband and I always say that the combination of the two of us turned out way better than either one of us alone 🙂
Elizabeth in Pipe Creek says
I recently took a roadtrip that involved driving 13 hours, each way, with my 4 and 5 year old son and daughter. The best trick I used was pinning clothespins on the visor number 13, 12 ,11 down to 1. As each hour passed, I took down a clothespin (so after the first hour I took down the “13” clothespin, etc etc) so the kids could see the numbers getting smaller and smaller. No one was allowed to ask “how much longer?” … and it really worked!
autumn says
great idea – thanks!
TAmi Charlton says
Lots of great ideas! Thank you!
Stephanie W says
Just a heads up, the Heaving Helper, while it looks like an awesome product, the seller no longer is doing business the right way. I paid for my product and never heard a work back. The number listed on the website is no longer in a valid number.
autumn says
Darn! I’ll remove it from the list right away.