Children have the attention span of a cat. They will literally change their mood and become excited at a funny shaped cloud. Or the sudden realization that they want to go swimming. Sometimes it’s the out of sight sound of a dog barking. Keeping them focused can be difficult, but with these fun things to do on long road trips maybe (just maybe) yours will be a little less stressful.
This post may contain affiliate links. If you click through and buy, TravelingInHeels will get a small commission. Thank you for your support!
Fun Things to Do on Long Road Trips With Family
Table of Contents
On a road trip, those cute littles quickly morph into bored creatures — and if those creatures ain’t happy, the road trip turns into a four-door prison. That’s why any family trip, especially long ones, should always consider fun things to do on long road trips.
Before we get started, with so many miles to cover, road accidents can occasionally be a cause for concern. Find a car accident chiropractor based in the city of Atlanta if you have been affected by a road collision injury. Now, let’s move on to how to keep the kids happy with these fun things to do on road trips.
Audiobooks
Playing an audiobook over your car stereo system offers your kids a moment of calm and perhaps even to fall asleep. Choose one of their favorite books. Or perhaps this is the time to play a new one to keep them engaged.
Now, most people would tell you that keeping the children awake until bedtime is preferable to letting them nap during the day. But on long road trips (and especially if the weather is warm and the scenery is dull), allowing an hour of sleep rather than having increasingly bored children is totally worth it.
Travel Goody Bag
Kids love “things” they can call their own. Whatever the item is that they’ve just grabbed and claimed, it won’t hold their attention for long, and they’ll soon want a new thing to pick up and be fascinated by. Use this to your advantage by creating a travel goody bag. It doesn’t have to be too extensive or expensive. Maybe five items will do the trick. The things you could put into the goody bag include:
- Stuffed animal or puppet
- Deck of Kids’ playing cards
- Book of puzzles
- Sticker books
- Notebook, and coloring pencils
- Coloring Book and crayons
You might also want to throw in a small gift, like some new sunglasses or a baseball cap, giving them much to be happy about before the car is even in motion!
Electronic Book Reader (and more!)
If you haven’t already, why not give them the gift of an electronic book reader as one of the fun things to do on long road trips? My grandkids love their Kindle. It keeps them entertained on road trips with books, games, videos, and more. Purchase their own set of headphones or earbuds to maintain your own sanity.
The Kindle Fire HD 8 Kids Edition includes a year of Amazon FreeTime Unlimited at no additional cost. Amazon FreeTime Unlimited offers over 20,000 books, movies, TV shows, educational apps, and games featuring kids’ favorite characters from PBS, Nickelodeon, Disney, and more. Titles are age-appropriate for kids from 3-12.
Bonus: The Kindle Fire HD also includes a durable case AND a 2-year-worry-free guarantee. If it breaks, Amazon will replace it for free!
Virtual Hide and Seek (it’s more fun than it sounds)
Now that your child has paper and something to write with, ask them to write down a place in your home in which they would like to hide. They are allowed to give you clues, but you must guess where is the hiding place.
Crank the silliness dial all the way up to the maximum by going first and hiding in the cutlery drawer or inside a glasses case. This is actually a really fun game to play with children, who invariably come up with the funniest places to hide that adults would scarcely ever come up with!
