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.
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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!
Melissa partida says
I live in Goodyear AZ Dec 28 2018 My husband 3 kids and i are driving Nakina North Carolina for my nieces wedding i need all the tips tricks and being sane for a 3 day long driving road trip
Thank you for the Great tips
Melissa
Lorrin @ embracetheperfectmess.com says
These are really great ideas! Taking road trips with kids can be interesting. We have taken many road trips with our kids, and some of these tips have really come in handy. there are a couple of new ones here too!
Binfi says
Great ideas!! Weekly larger medicine/vitamin organizer would also work for #10 if you need individual lids, too
Margaret@GrowingPlay says
Great suggestions. We have done many of these before with our family of 6. On our last 24 hour road trip to Florida we did bring along the map so the kids could see where we were. This was great. It reinforced the benefits of a paper map (being able to see the whole trip at once) and provided a start and end point.
Here was one of our favorite games to pass the time QUIZ QUESTIONS – http://growingplay.blogspot.com/2015/12/quiz-question-road-trip-game.html
Carrie says
Last road trip I took, we met each kid pick out a CD, and when they would get grumpy or tired of coloring, we would take a vote on which CD to play. They had a lot of fun singing along to their favorite songs and even dancing (safe in their seatbelts of course).