20 Ideas to Make Road Trips with Children More Bearable

Road Trips!! Woohoo! They are so fun and exhilarating, right? WRONG. Well, most of the time anyway — if you are a parent.

We are not talking about those spring break road trips to nowhere (except drunk town) that you used to take with your friends in college. Conversely, we are talking about road trips that you take with your children.

Do you dread them or do you look forward to them?

For most of you, you may be taking some sort of trip this summer, close or far from home. Still, one thing I believe that most of us would agree upon, is that if your car trip lasts any longer than fifteen minutes, you will likely hear about it from your bored child(ren).

To help you out, and heck, to help myself out, I have compiled a list of car games for you and the kiddies to play, to make a road trip not seem so long, or to at least help entertain your children and minimize the amount fussing that will be heard.

Here we go! Or should I say here you go — on your way to a peaceful road trip with your children in tow (ahem…not literally)…

20 Games to Play in the Car with Your Kiddos During a Road Trip

1. “I am going on a picnic” Game.
2. “What the clouds look like” Game.
3. Do Whiteboard Writing/Drawing. Buy a cheap whiteboard and dry erase marker to keep in the car. Dollar Tree/Family Dollar sells these and you can usually find them in the $1 bins at Target as well.
4. Use a Travel Chalkboard.
5. “I Spy” Game.
6. “Create a Story” Game. One passenger starts the story and you go around the car with each person adding another sentence to the story. Once one story is ended, let a different passenger start the next story and repeat the pattern.
7. Have a Karaoke Sing-a-long.
8. Driving Scavenger Hunt. This one requires some prep work/planning on your part if you want to create the list for free and on your own. However, you can also find preprinted travel/driving scavenger hunt papers on Amazon and Etsy.
9. Play “Twenty Questions”.
10. Let them play with moldable “Wiki Sticks”. 
11. Let them use a LeapFrog, Ipad, Kindle, or your phone.
12. Have them do some pen-pal type letters. Give them cards and envelopes and let them write letters to out-of-town family and/or friends, which they can mail at a later time.
13. Let them do ColorWonder workbooks.
14. Have them read a “Look and Find” book.
15. Have a bubble blowing contest. Of course, only if they are of age to chew gum.
16. Let them play with finger puppets. Don’t want to buy any? Before you leave for your drive, draw faces on each of their fingers.
17. Play seated “Simon Says”.
18. Pack them a surprise bag. Take a brown paper bag and fill it with one cheap (think Dollar Tree) and small toy for each half or full hour of drive. If they behave well during the drive, let them close their eyes and pull out one surprise for each length of time you decide upon.
19. Pack them a “Guess What It Is” Snack Bag. Encourage them to close their eyes, stick their hand in the bag, eat it and then guess what it is based on their senses. Of course your children must be old enough to eat independently in the car. *note — Alternatively, I have heard it be suggested that you could keep a candy bag up front with you and every time a child misbehaves, you throw a piece out the window…that may work too.
20. Imagine. Let them use their own imagination to create a game. Imagine that…having them use their own imagination…incredible…I must have used mine to come up with that idea. 🙂

Have any other ideas? Feel free to share them in the comments!

Now that you are set up for road trip success, go ahead and plan a trip for the weekend!

“Road trips aren’t measured by mile markers, but by moments.” – Unknown