More Things to do in the car

We've shared several games to play, but you can't play games all day long, so here are a few other activities. Most of these are for younger children, but not all. And while all of this post is written in the present tense, that's because I first wrote it a few years ago and last posted it three years ago. This stage of my life is mostly over now, as the youngest child is 11, and now that my husband has retired from the military the days of long road trips are past.

I often keep a bag of little toys and goodies up front with me. A few times through-out the day I will pass these back to the little ones. I visit thrift shops and hunt through what I have at home to find things to include in the goody bag.

Pipecleaners- these are neat, tidy, small, and not messy. The children can make shapes out of them, make letters, numbers, and jewelry, make pipe-cleaner stick figures to play with- they are so versatile and just an ideal toy for long car trips.

Bubbles: I keep the bottle of bubbles up front with me, but we turn on the vents (or crack the windows) and blow bubbles that drift back to the children, who try to catch them and/or pop them. (Make your own bubbles with two tablespoons of dish soap- Dawn makes great bubbles, and a cup of water. Add 1 Tablespoon of glycerin for extra strong bubbles- use those pipecleaners to make bubble wands!)

Small toys such as Beanie babies- these can be quite cheap at thrift shops, and they also have the virtue of being quiet and not messy.

I don't like crayons when traveling because they break, get left in inaccessible corners and melt, and we once had a child manage to lose a bit of broken crayon down inside the seat belt buckle and it was months before we could get it out and use that seatbelt again. We bring colored pencils and a couple small pencil sharpeners.
We bring scratch paper and pictures printed out from the internet and coloring books picked up cheaply at the dollar store or thrift shops.

Small flashlights- When we first began traveling we used these. They are not small, but they were free since the Headmaster was given them for work on the flightline. The nice thing about them is that they had a link on the end, so we hung them by plastic links from the garment hook inside the car (this was not safe, and we did it differently later). They also had colored plastic filters, which you could make yourself. Just buy some colored cellophane (look at thin plastic report covers in different colors. Trace your flashlight lens on the colored plastic and cut out the circle so you can unscrew your flashlight and put the colored filter on top of the lens and put it back together, giving the kids different colored lights to play with. This is also nice for night driving because they can have enough light to see by without distracting the driving.

Whiteboards: Miller Pads and Paper sells these for about a dollar. I LOVE those guys. I wonder if anybody has tried dry/erase markers on car windows? I haven't, but I've heard they work on mirrors, so I wonder about windows. That would keep the window seat passengers occupied for a while, I would guess.- and now they make dry erase markers without caps to lose- they click in and out like ball point pens.

Stickers, gluesticks, safety scissors, a pad of paper and an old magazine- should be obvious enough what to do with them.

Picture books, and the Cherub gets a small photo album of family, the pets, the house, and friends. If we can, we also like to include pictures of people we are going to see.

Miniature anything- little horses, soldiers, cars, action figures, tiny baby dolls, all these are fun travel toys.

In one of the comments to one of our other posts on this topic, Donna mentioned stringing up a row of clothespins, and every fifty miles you move one of those clothespins over.

Books on tape and headphones- Then the Equuschick and the HeadGirl were small we had a small child's tape player with headphones. The headphones snapped in two once, and it was the best thing that ever happened. Each girl could listen by holding one half of the broken headphones up to her ear, AND by using it this way, they weren't isolating themselves from the rest of the family, AND they had to sit close and be cooperative if they both wanted to hear. Oddly enough, that little tape player is now over 20 years old, and it still works! NONE of our other tape players has lasted this long (and now, of course, kids are using iPods and Mp3 players.

Magnets and a small cookie tin or a magnetized whiteboard are fun. I like the cookie tin because then all the pieces can be stored inside it. Magnetic poetry is fun, but hard on those of us who are prone to motion sickness. I've also thought of cutting up some thin sheets of magnet into small pieces and using Altoids tins for the magnet board.