Thursday, June 05, 2008

Traveling With Kids- What to Bring on the Car Ride?

So our family vacation is coming up and I'm starting to plan the car ride. lol This will be the longest the boys have had to ride in the car. (well, except for when Brendan was 3 and we went to Michigan, that was about the same number of hours and he did great!). Now with 2 of them though, even a car ride to the store can be a nightmare under certain circumstances, so I don't know how the 7+ hours will go. (and come March, the 13+ hr ride to Florida too, but I can't think about that one yet. lol).

So, here's what I'm definitely planning to have in the car for them:
- Leapster
- Game Boy (if we can find it- Brendan thinks he might have left it at our last hotel, ugh!)
- Dual-screen dvd player (we've had this for a year or two but have never used it yet)
- snacks & drinks
- various toys & books they pick to bring
- a couple new toys & books that they aren't sick of yet
- notebooks/coloring books for them to draw/color in
- Brain Quest cards for each of their appropriate levels
- Kid appropriate cds to listen to
- someone suggested the AquaDoodle Travel N Doodle, but I haven't decided if we'll get that or not.
- Binder of various things printed from online: coloring pages, word searches, dot-to-dot, etc.

We have some verbal car games we will undoubtedly play too of course. We tried car bingo on our recent weekend trip, and they got bored really quickly, so they probably won't want to do that again.

Okay, what am I forgetting? Anything that is a must-have for a long car-ride with a 7 & 3 yr old that you have done that was a hit?

2 comments:

3XMom said...

I think you are good! We did a 500-mile road trip in March, and only had snacks and the DVD player and some coloring pages - and the kids did fine. Course, mine a girls, so they have a bit more of an attention span! :) Good luck!

Peggy said...

That's a great list! I can't think of anything that you are missing!