Traveling with Children

I have family that lives all over, so for vacations we do a lot of traveling. We are not hip with the times and do not have a TV & DVD player in van - so how do I survive traveling 10+ hours with 5 children? Here are some ideas:


Play games -

I Spy Alphabet game - who can get through the entire alphabet using letters from road sides only (can include retail businesses as well), first.

I Spy Color game - self explanatory

Card games - great time to play go fish, old maid, crazy 8's etc.

Travel Games - Connect 4, TicTacToe. They even have travel size Scrabble, Monopoloy etc.

I came across a great website called Mom's Mini van. She has games like auto bingo, paper battleship, scavenger hunt lists etc. I printed them out and put them in page protectors. I then put one of each in my child's vinyl folder (with the brads for adding pages inside). My children are color coded, so each child get his/her color folder and dry erase marker. They can play, wipe them off and play again.

Books on cassette/CD. You don't have to spend a fortune of them if you have a good library nearby. Somehow getting lost in the story helps the miles to just melt away.

In my effort to get and stay organized, I have a created a travel bin with the aformentioned items in them. All I have to do is grab it (add the tapes we want to listen to) and go.

Also sing songs - folk songs, kids songs, songs that are playing on your favorite radio station and/or CD.

So have fun and create a lot of good memories traveling in the car!