Road Trip

kelbel527 · August 2013

I'm preparing for our road trip with both boys in less than two weeks. We're driving 16+ hours in total (each way), stopping about 8 hours into the trip & staying overnight. I'm super nervous about the car rides. I'm putting together road-trip bags for each boy (including new backpack for the big-kid, he'll be so excited for that alone). I'm hoping variety of toys/stickers/foods/movies will keep the 3.5 year old entertained.

How do I stop the almost 1 year-old from freaking out when he feels cooped up? I'm planning to stop as much as necessary, but also want to get there as soon as possible too. So I bought him a few new toys plus digging out some old ones he hasn't played with before, I'm hoping the variety will help.

@penelopepond - I saw you posted about a trip in Monday randoms - what are you doing for your boys?

AKB090609 · August 2013

We just did a 20 hour trip two weeks ago. DD was awesome. The only thing we did was make sure we were on the road before nap time. She napped longer than normal so that was nice. We also had planned to stop at rest areas with play grounds so she could move around rather than go from the car to eating back to the car.

hmp1 · August 2013

Something James really likes, I printed out these letters, numbers, and shapes. I used a 1" binder and sheet protectors for all the pages (double up for front and back). He can race a car around and we can talk about the letter. It keeps him busy for awhile.

https://makinglearningfun.com/themepages/RacecarABCcards.htm

I bought a $1 cookie sheet for each boy at the dollar store. I put chalk contact paper on James and had a plastic chalk holder to keep the mess down. I brought the Leap Frog alphabet and farm magnet set for the cookie sheets. Leo loved that. He also loved just banging a car around on it.

Wiffle ball with a string to attach to his seat was a hit.

A lot of books. He really likes the soft photo album book we have.

PenelopePond · August 2013

For Ethan (almost 4), I bought a little Leap Frog thing for him to practice writing letters and numbers. It was $18 on Amazon, so not too bad. He has some vtech thing that he can play games on, so we will bring that. We are also going to put a few kids movies on our iPod touch to keep him enteretained. I'm going to go to the store tomorrow and pick out a new book for him.

For Sean I plan on brining a bag full of toys. We has so many that he never plays with them all. They'll be like new to him. I really like the ball on the string idea that @hmp1 mentioned. Sean would love that. I'm still trying to figure out more things for him. Hopefully he will sleep a bunch

jocymama · August 2013

When we drove to Florida it was a fourteen hour trip. We hooked up DVD players for the girls. For our 4 year old she was also allowed to play games on our phones. Corinne was generally fine, she got edgy a couple times and I climbed back and sat next to her, gave her back her paci and tried to distract her, if that didn't work we stopped and took a break. We only had to take one extra break on the trip home (so 4 stops total) and we drove straight through.

kelbel527 · August 2013

Thanks for the suggestions ladies! @penelopepond - since you're traveling first, if you learn anything from your trip, please feel free to pass it along!

@jocymama - I'm amazed you did the whole trip in one day. We considered it, but I'm too afraid of major meltdowns. But maybe on the way home we'll give it a try and see how far we can get.

jocymama · August 2013

@kelbel527 I was also concerned with meltdowns so we went with the plan that we would leave on Saturday and drive as long as the girls could handle it so we still had Sunday to drive back if needed. We ended up not needing the extra day for travel. Good luck and have fun on your trip!

PenelopePond · August 2013

I will!

Want a personalized experience?

Road Trip

Re: Road Trip

Choose Another Board

Search Boards