Anyway, here are some things that we have found helpful for traveling with small children and making it fun for the whole family.
WRAPPED GIFTS
One of the BEST things I did for the car time was wrap a whole bunch of presents! I got so excited the night before our trip, staying up late wrapping things – it was like Christmas!! Then I put my big “santa bag” by my seat and got out one small present per child at certain intervals – like when they were starting to get bored or crabby.
Here are the things I wrapped:
*Snacks. They were *so* much more exciting when they got to unwrap them, rather than just hand them a bag of something. I wrapped individual baggies for each of the children of almonds, pretzels, corn chips, granola bars, trail mix. etc. If any of your children tend toward car sickness, think salty and not sweet! Just remember that the salty snacks will likely make them thirsty, so be sure to have plenty of water bottles along as well!
*Toys. I had a stash of the children’s toys in the crawl space for several months, so they had forgotten all about them! I got a couple back out for the trip, toy dinosaurs, matchbox cars, etc.
*Crafts. I wrapped a coloring book for ech complete with a ziplock baggie of crayons, a gallon ziplock of construction paper with stickers, activity books, depending on the age of the child, pencil fun books with a pencil – you know those books you have to color in with a pencil for the picture to appear.
*Educational Cards, depending on the age of the child. Your local dollar store may have some. We have some for letters, numbers, Bible characters, facts about states, and some “pictures”of various objects and people. Or, just playing cards for older children to play war or solitaire.
*Books. The timing of our trip was perfect, because I had just gotten the kids some new books at the homeschool convention, which I had not given to them yet, so I wrapped those for the trip. You could still do this with old favorites, though, or even with some library books you pick up before the trip.
*Magnets. I went to the thrift shop before our trip and picked up a metal plate for each child. I was actually looking for cookie sheets, but they didn’t have any, so teh plates worked. Then I wrapped a package of magnets for each child. I had some educational ones of letters, numbers, months of the year, and farm animals. I also had a set of Noah’s ark magnets. You could check your local dollar store for some. These were a big hit!
Other Ideas to Pass Time:
*Years ago, I recorded myself reading books to the children on cassette tapes . They hadn’t listened to them for some time, so I brought those along and they were great fun! If you don’t have some you previously taped, maybe you could still record yourself before the trip – these days with an MP3 player. Be sure to let the kids talk on them some too – ask them some questions and such – that is so much fun to hear once they get a little bigger. They love hearing themselves!
*If your children are old enough to appreciate it, you could take along a kids atlas. I have DK State-By-State Atlas, which is fabulous. It has a page for each state with full color pictures of some of the attractions and a paragraph of interesting facts and history. Every time we entered a new state, I pulled it out and read a bit to the children, showed them the state on the map and we had fun talking about what to do in that state.
*Balloons. I let the kids blow them up themselves, and then they had a great time playing with them. Even the baby enjoyed this! I didn’t wrap these, but you could if you like.
*Bubbles. I had gotten some little bitty bubble bottles with wands at a wedding I went to and I saved them for such a time as this. The kids were busy for about an hour blowing bubbles in the car, and again, the baby loved it too!
We prefer not to use media too much, at home or elsewhere -it’s kind of a last resort for us. Not over-using media allows us to focus on interaction as a family. However, we did bring along a couple of DVDs for when it was dark and the kids could not do much else, and they were tired and fussy – to pass the rest of the time until reaching our destination. So, here’s the tip I wanted to pass along. If you have a laptop, you don’t have to spend extra money on a DVD player for your car! You can simply buy a $14 converter at Wal-Mart to be able to plug your laptop into the cigarette lighter, and WALA! You can now use your laptop to watch movies in the car, or listen to audios on MP3, if you don’t have an MP3 player as we do not, etc.
One thing we didn’t do this time, but was a great idea passed on by my sister-in-law, was “wonder markers” by Crayola. These *only* mark on the specific paper that comes in the package, so you don’t have to worry about them marking up their clothes or the car, or about crayons melting in the sun, etc.
Necessary Amenities
One more thing I must mention, although it is not an “activity” : make sure you bring along plenty of tissues, napkins, and baby wipes for the inevitable messes that are sure to ensue with children present!
Also, take a stash of plastic grocery sacks. These are great for trash that will accumulate in the car, for containing diaper odors, for dirty laundry, etc, etc. And ziploc baggies are helpful too, both in the sandwich size and in the gallon size. Multi-use!
You just can’t have too many of these amenities!
Once you get where you are going, here are some things we found helpful to make it a fun time:
*Go at the pace of the children.
Don’t plan to do too much! Pick two or three attractions per day only and make sure they are ones the children will find interesting. If they involve standing in line for ridiculous amounts of time, you might want to skip it. For example, at the Statue of Liberty, we opted to just take pictures from the outside rather than waiting in line forever to go up. The inside really isn’t that exciting anyway, so we took pictures from the outside and then went on our way.
If your final destination is really far from your home, consider driving in bits, and seeing things along the way so you aren’t going more than 7-8 hours a day, or drive into the night so the kids can sleep through part of it. This is a little rough on the parents, but it does cut down on road noise.
*Make sure your attitude stays upbeat!
This one is *huge*! Include the children in your planning of the day, talking up how much fun you are going to have at such-and-such a place. Talk to them while you are there, explaining on their level why this is important, or where it came from, etc. Talk about how blessed you are to have the opportunity to visit this place, how the Lord is blessing your trip with a sunny day, with the opportunity to spend some family time, or whatever else you can think of to be thankful for! This attitude goes a LONG way, rather than just a “let’s hurry on to the next place” kind of thing.
*Bring along a folder for each place you plan to visit.
In these folders we collected pamphlets and brochures and postcards from each place we went. I plan to make a collage with the kids on a posterboard with the children of these things when we get home as a recap of our trip. You can include maps to trace your travels, photos, drawings the kids do of things they saw or whatever else you can think of!
If you have other ideas to share, I would love to hear them! Leave a comment below!
Happy Travels!!
No comments:
Post a Comment