Road Trip Activities

Car Dancing

Materials: CD’s, radio, musical instruments, and/or windpipes

Put some upbeat music on and dance in your seats.

Songs and Fingerplays

Songs and especially fingerplays are fun for young children.  Click here for words and actions to some popular ones.

Paper plate faces

Materials: paper plates, markers or crayons, scrap art materials

Use markers to draw faces on paper plates.  Children who enjoy gluing can add hair and other decorations using whatever is at hand.  Poke holes for the eyes.  Put plates up to your faces and talk to one another.  My kids loved this activity.  Alisha would make piles of faces and she and I would entertain each other and Ethan and Daddy with them.

Puppet shows

Materials: craft sticks and stickers, or finger puppets, or markers

Put stickers on craft sticks, bring finger puppets from home, or draw faces on your fingertips to use as puppets.  Use the puppets to talk, sing, and act out stories.  You can  act out a favourite, such as The Three Little Pigs, add variations, or make up your own altogether.

Cloud watching

Materials: clouds

Find shapes, animals, vehicles, etc in the clouds.  This activity is great especially for the little ones who cannot yet see much out the window.

One-line storytelling

Materials: paper (optional)

One person begins a story with the first sentence.  The next person adds the next sentence.  And so on until the story is finished.  If you like, someone can volunteer to record it and read the whole story aloud when it is finished.

Yes/No

Materials: none

One person thinks of an object and begins by telling everyone whether it is animal, mineral, or vegetable.  The others then take turns asking questions which must be answered with ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to guess the object.

Personal history stories

Materials: none

A road trip, with all of its opportunities for exploring history, geology, and geography, can be thought of as a giant field trip.  Why not add some personal history to it by recounting family stories?  Children especially love the story of how they came to be (Mommy and Daddy wanted a baby, little one grew inside Mommy’s tummy and got bigger and bigger, etc.).

Travel Journal or Scrapbook

Materials: duotang, paper, pen or pencil, camera (optional), printer (optional), lapdesk or old cookie sheet

Fill a duotang with paper for each family member.  Each person can record moments from the trip that are special, exciting, sad, or otherwise memorable.  Bring a Polaroid camera or portable photo printer, or draw pictures, to add some visual memories.

Quiet Time

Materials: toys, markers, activity books, audio books, books for readers

Balance out family activities with some quiet-time activities such as dot-to-dot puzzles, mazes, colouring sheets, and toys.  We put a box filled with toys and markers between the kids carseats.  At any time they could reach in to look for something to do.

Music

Materials: CD’s, radio

Set the mood with music.  Whether you put on upbeat tunes to inspire energy or play lullabies so the napping baby or toddler will have a chance at rest, all creatures great and small respond to music.

Carschooling

This book is filled with ideas for schooling on the road.  An excellent resource for any family that plans to spend a lot of time in their car.

Pencil-and-Paper Games (for 2 players)

Materials:  Pen or pencil, paper

Tic-Tac-Toe – Make a grid of 9 squares (3 x 3).  One person will place x’s and the other person O’s.  Take turns placing your symbol in a square.  First to get 3 in a row wins.  Variation:  begin with a 5 x 5 grid.

SOS - Use graph paper or draw your own.  Each player takes turns placing either an ‘S’ or an ‘O’ in a square.   When the pattern “S-O-S” is completed, a line may be drawn through it for a point.  A crossed-out letter may be used again in a subsequent pattern.

Hangman - One person thinks of a word or phrase.  He or she writes it out replacing the letters with blanks (‘_’).  The other person tries to guess letters that belong in the blanks.  A correct guess gets filled in to the appropriate blanks.  An incorrect guess leads the writer to add a body part onto the stick figure of a man.  The game ends when the entire phrase is correctly guessed or when the drawing of the ‘Hangman’ is complete.

Have a favourite roadtrip activity to share?  Post it in the comments section!