BEST Road Trip Activities for Young Kids!!! 25 Ways to Keep Your Kids Entertained on Long Drives!

Hi, I'm Charlene from Adventures with the Hills, and today I'm going to show you all of the best road trip activities for young kids. We have spent a ton of time road tripping across North America with our kids since they were babies. We have found all of the things that work best for them while traveling, and I'm so excited to share that with you today. We like to make the journey just as much a part of our travel as the destinations, and making sure that everyone has fun while we're driving is really important to us. I like to find activities that keep our kids entertained and everyone in the vehicle happy. Pretty much everything I'm going to show you today can be put together with minimal preparation or effort or cost. Some of these things are things that we've been gifted over the years. I also like to ask for activities from family and friends for my kids' Christmas and birthday gifts, and then we just tuck those away in our road trip activity kit, and it's ready to go when we're going on a trip. We'll start things off with our road trip activity kit. This is what we have that works for us. It is a six sliding drawer set. We have a Dodge Grand Caravan. This fits perfectly between the middle two bucket seats. We have two kids. That's the arrangement that works best for us. You could also use reusable shopping bags, backpacks, the over-the-seat travel containers, whatever works best. Find a system for you where you can access things easily and clean up easily as well. When we're not road tripping, I just take all of this, store it in the top of one of my kids' closets, and then just with a little bit of restocking, it's ready to go for our next trip. All right, one of our very favorite activities while road tripping is lacing gourds. We have the animal set. These are thin wooden pieces, and they also have little shoelaces that come with them. The kids just thread the string through the holes on the outside, and I keep all of this in a little Ziploc. I'll put a link to these below in the description. All right, one of our family favorite is read-along books. This is one of our favorite here, The Kite Princess. These come with a CD, so you would need a CD in your vehicle. Somebody on the CD reads through the book, and they have a little chime when they have to turn the page. Our kids will listen to these for hours while we're driving. I would recommend not getting any books that are less than about five minutes at the very minimum. 15 to 20 is kind of the sweet spot. Our local library also has a ton of options, so if you don't want to purchase them, check your library and see if you can get them for free to borrow. You're going to want some kind of surface that your kids can do their activities and their work on while you're driving. We've tried the over-the-lap kind of travel desks. It works if your child is just sitting in a seat, they're in a car seat or certain kinds of boosters. We found that those didn't work so well. What we found has worked absolutely magnificently is a magnetic cookie sheet. We picked these up at our local dollar store. They have a magnetic surface, a little lip, and these, seriously, these are gold for road tripping. I'm going to show you a bunch of different ways that our kids use these trays along with the magnetic surface. At our dollar store, I also picked up a bunch of these snap-open containers, and I added some magnets to the bottom of these, so they will attach to the cookie trays. I can fill them up with stuff for the kids, and they don't slide around. This saves so much mess. One of our kids' favorite activities to do while road tripping is beading. You might think I'm crazy for bringing beads in the van, but we keep them in these little containers, we attach them to the cookie sheet, and once they're in place, they're not going anywhere. We found the best way for the kids to do beading while we're driving is with pipe cleaners. I like to get the kids started by twisting the pipe cleaner around one bead, and then the kids will sit in their seat and thread on beads for a very long time. If they don't notice and don't care, when they are done their beading creation, you can actually just take all the beads, slide them off, and put them back in. Another one of our kids' favorite road trip activities is playing with stickers. I have tons of these sheets of stickers that I've cut into smaller sizes. Anytime that our kids have been gifted those giant sticker books with 3,000 stickers, I let them play with some of them, and then I cut them up into smaller sizes, and I put them in our road trip activity kit. I also found this construction paper set that has half-sized sheets, and I find these are great for taking along with us. So what I will do is get a piece of construction paper and a set of stickers. I like to send them back one at a time. If I send back all of the stickers, the kids take one from every sheet, so I send that back. They have fun putting on the stickers, making different scenes, and then they have a whole bunch of artwork. Another thing I found useful to get is a little folder. We have one of these for both of our kids, and as they make all their wonderful art as we're traveling, we put it right in these containers. It just helps keep everything clean and organized, and then they have their stuff all sorted. Another way that you can play with stickers while road tripping is with a reusable sticker scene. This one here is a mermaid set. I just picked this up at our local dollar store. Another way we like to use these cookie trays is for coloring. I have one of these containers with magnets on the bottom. We filled one of these up for each of our kids with crayons, and when we put them on the cookie sheet and the kids have them, they don't spill. I usually bring along a couple coloring books. Our kids love Paw Patrol, so you're going to see a bit of a theme today, but you can bring whatever your children love. I usually rip out one page at a time. I'll put that on the cookie tray, again, pass it back to the kids. The great thing with these cookie trays, even with the beads, if the kids drop stuff, it usually just stays on the tray, and then it makes for a super easy cleanup. Next, I'm going to show you some of our very favorite ways to use the magnetic property of this cookie sheet. If you didn't think these were awesome enough already, just wait. First up is magnetic dolls. We have Cinderella, and we also have two dress-up dolls from Alyssa and Doug. There are tons of other options. I like to keep all the little pieces in a Ziploc bag, and I'll usually send back a few options on the cookie sheet for the kids to play with. They then take the magnets. The dolls are magnetic as well, so they can put the clothes on. I will link below to some of our favorites. Next up is foam letters and numbers. Our kids got these from their school. They're just thin foam letters and numbers with a magnetic surface on the back. So I like to send these back to them. They have fun putting them in different orders, sorting by color. If the kids are older, you can actually get them to spell different words. You can also have them match capitals and small letters. Lots of different educational values that you can add in if you want. Any type of magnet will work on the magnetic cookie sheet surface, so you can literally just bring magnets. I found this set of magnets at our local dollar store. The kids have fun sorting them by size, by color. They just make different shapes and scenes out of those and enjoy playing with them. We also have these super cute animal magnets. The next few activities I'm going to show you do require a little bit of work. I'm not super crafty. I don't love putting a ton of time into this. But if you are crafty and love this stuff, then I mean, the sky is the limit. You can literally do anything with these. One activity that I put together for my kids is this matching game. So we have a vehicle's option and a cute little critter option. I found these templates online. I can link below in the description for you. I printed them out, laminated them, and then attached little magnets to the back of the matching cards. So the kids look at their card, they find the ones that match up, and then they stick right onto them. I also got this puzzle. I put magnets on the back of the puzzle pieces, and then the kids just take the pieces. You could even do it without gluing it, and then they can do a puzzle on their cookie sheet and all the pieces will stay on. All right, this is the most crafter-intense activity that we have. My sister-in-law made this for our kids as a gift, and she is a crafter extraordinaire. So this is a piece of felt. I've attached magnets to the four corners. This spreads on the cookie sheet as a background, and then we have all of these adorable little felt shapes that the kids can set on the felt as a felt scene. Check out that detail. I couldn't do this. This is beyond my skill and patience. That's it for specific magnetic activities. There are so many options. Another one of our kids' favorite things to do is scratch art. So these come as black pages. You get a tool to scratch off the black, and you're left with fun colors behind that. Some of them have different pictures that you can scratch out. My kids sometimes love to just scratch off an entire page, which takes them a long time, and they have so much fun doing. There is a bit of black dust that is left around, but we've never found it to be too much of a mess. I always like to throw in something new when we're going on a trip. Usually I can just go to the dollar store and find a fun activity, a book full of mazes, a sticker book, a peel-and-stick activity. Again, you can find an age-appropriate activity for your children. Whenever we're in the car with our kids, we like to use crayons or pencil crayons for drawing. We never like to use markers because they just get over everything. We have found that mess-free markers or Crayola mess-free markers work really well. So this is a marker that will not mark anything unless it is on one of these pages. Crayola has markers where you can actually choose colors, and then those only work on the Crayola paper. Again, I will link below some of our favorites, and you can go check those out. I also printed out and laminated these road trip bingo sheets for the kids. We have them use stickers to check off what they found, just so they can take the stickers off and then use the sheets again. Let's move on to toys. Whenever we travel, we do bring some toys for our kids, but we don't bring too many. If you have too many options, I find they just don't play with them and are just a waste of space. We do like to bring along some of our favorites, though. We have the whole gang here. Got some Paw Patrol characters. We also keep some in this set that are only brought out for road trips. I also printed out and laminated a little city scene. My son loves cars. I put magnets on the corners so it sticks on his tray, and he can drive his car throughout the city. If you have really young kids, you might want to bring along a favorite book or toy that they have, just something they can flip through or play with as they're driving. A lot of these activities aren't great for babies, but that's a different video. We also like to bring along a pillow, blanket, and stuffed animals for our kids. They often take naps while we're driving, and that just gives them some comfort and something cozy. Okay, let's talk about screen time. With our kids, we like to limit the amount of screen time they have while we're traveling. It just keeps us all more present, being able to enjoy the scenery around us. Also, sometimes we find that our kids are a little more edgy after they've had some screen time, so we often save that until the end of a drive day, if we're going to be driving past bedtime, or if they've just had a really long day. We keep some kid-friendly DVDs in our vehicle, and so those are there for when we need them. We also have old iPhones of ours that we have loaded up with games and music that the kids like. We also bring headphones so that not everybody has to listen to the games. In order to keep everything organized and tidy, I would suggest that every time you stop, you take one or two minutes and just do a quick tidy. Bathroom stops, food stops, when you get to your destination, just take a minute, pick things up, put garbage away, everything back wherever you're storing it. This just helps keep things under control as you're driving, so you can have more fun and access the activities as you need them. We also like to play family games while we're driving. Sometimes we don't need a tangible activity, just something we can do together. Some of the games we like to play are I Spy, 20 Questions, Guess My Animal, Starts With, so I Spy, we'll either say, I spyed my little eye, something that is blue, or if we want to add some phonics into it, we'll say, I spied my little eye, something that starts with t, t, and we'll start to work on those letter sounds. 20 Questions, again, you just pick an object, and people ask you questions, trying to guess your object. Guess My Animal, we'll ask yes or no questions until we guess the animal. When the kids are older, games like the alphabet game, start at A, and you try and find from signs and letters outside the vehicle, all the way through Z. Sometimes we work together as a team, sometimes it's a competition, sometimes we'll go through the alphabet, starting at A, and say, okay, everybody say a fruit, a country, a name that begins with A, and then we move on to B. We'll just pick like one theme and go through the alphabet, but that gets the kids thinking, gets everyone involved together. Another game we like to play is Let's All Sit Quietly and Look Out the Window. Sometimes I have had enough with turning around, passing things, getting things organized. Sometimes I've just had enough talking, and we are often passing amazing scenery and places, and it's just important sometimes to just watch what we're driving by. It is not bad to tell your kids you're just gonna take a little break from taking things out, that is A-okay. It's also really important to have some music that everyone in the car likes. Sometimes it's Disney stuff that we enjoy, or artists that we know are kid-friendly, or some kid music that doesn't make us want to cry. Maybe ahead of time, put together a road trip playlist that everyone in the family is going to enjoy. Alright, let's talk about snacks. It is so important to have lots of snacks when you're road tripping with young kids. They get hungry all the time, and you don't want to be stopping. You have to stop enough for bathroom breaks, so have the snacks with you. We often will fill the top, maybe the top two drawer with snacks while we're traveling, and then it's just easy to pass the kids something. You want things that are mess-free, small pieces that aren't gonna be choked on, and can be an easy clean up if that needs to happen. We actually use these little containers for snacks as well. The ones that didn't have crayons or craft supplies in them, and we will put little snacks in it, put it on the kids' cookie tray, and pass it back to them. If they spill, it usually stays on the tray, and it's an easy clean up. Snacks that we've found that work really well are things like pouches, dried fruit, puffs, little granola bars, goldfish. It's also really important to have a reusable water bottle close by for your child, so they can drink as needed while you're driving. Get one that doesn't spill. Alright, that is everything I have to share today. I hope you've enjoyed this and that it's been helpful. Please like this video and subscribe to our channel for more adventures. If you have any questions at all about road tripping with young kids, please leave your question in the comments and I'd be happy to chat. Also, if you have any other road trip activity ideas I didn't mention, please leave a comment. I'd love to hear. Thanks so much for watching. Happy road tripping!