Me, three dogs, one cat, one fish, 1 17 yob, and Annabelle. Three or more days driving from Minnesota to Washington state. Sound like fun? I'm a bit freaked out. LOL!

I'm the only driver. We're leaving Tuesday, and I won't have a lot of money. I have a road atlas with all the Wal-Marts marked on it for the journey (cheep food, chance for Annabelle to run around).

What should I do, or pack, to stay sane? I have four books on tape, and two more on order from the library. My brother will be bringing his laptop, which can play DVDs so I'll pack ours to keep Annabelle somewhat happy. We're planning on stopping at the Museum of the Rockies to feed Annabelle's dinosaur habit.

I thought about a Leap Pad, but those things are expensive, as are the books that go with them! I might get a Magna Doodle.

What can I do? Any advice? Should I get some Valiuum? (joking, LOL!)

The new magna doodles are awesome! SO much better than the older ones. We always take those with us on trips.

What about some stickers? Fun children's music to listen and sing to? Although the 17yo might not be too happy with that.

LOL That's quite a motley crew you are traveling with! I'm sure you will do great, have a fun time and certainly have plenty of stories to tell.

We travel via car quite often (at least 8 hours at a clip), and movies are a godsend. Along with coloring stuff, hand held games and lots of good snacks.

Stopping every 2-3 hours is a given of course. :)

Now I'm dreaming of a map of all the McDonalds and Burger Kings with play areas...

We keep a magnadoodle in our car permantly. It never leaves the car, and it will keep DS quiet and content for quite awhile! I also keep a bag full of toys for him too that easily reachable from the passenger seat to hand him something different to play with each when he gets antsy.

When we drove to Florida last fall, unless he was asleep, everytime we stopped at a rest stop or whatever, we took him out of the car and let him run around to blow off energy. Rest stops especially were good (during daylight hours of course) b/c we'd all get out of the van, lock it up, and go walk around and let Connor run in the grass around us and whatnot.

My dd has the my first leap pad. I never leave on a car trip without it! We also have a travel magna doodle,books,crayons and tons of paper. Also some small toys. Have her pick out what she would like to snack on during the ride.:)

Good Luck.:)

Sue

When we traveled when I was a child -- and there were 5 kids and 2 adults, my mom would know every park and historical area on the route. We would try to find one around lunch time so we could stop, picnic lunch, then run around a while to get all the energy used up. It was free, fun, education occasionally, and make the rides much more enjoyable for all.

We've done way too many long car trips than any sane person should with kids. (PA to MS; MS to PA; PA to WA- that was 7 days; WA to NE; NE to TX to NE; NE to CO to NE; and at least 4 NE to PA to NE)

What has worked for our toddlers/preschoolers is DRAMAMINE! It helped the kids stay calm, they didn't get car sick then (this was after one unexpected bout of carsickness in the middle of rush hour traffic in a large city interstate). Also magna doodles, any type of sticker book, color wonder markers, Leap Frog toys (turbo twist type games, phonics/math desk), those hairy magnet toys where you move the 'hair' around, snacks every hour or so, and their favorite is the pipe cleaners.

Good luck. :D

Just want to say that rest stops are a great stopping place for letting the dogs run around and go to the bathroom, and they're free! The majority of the ones I've been to are pretty nice, not scummy at all, and some in Colorado were actually pretty (it was on a river). Wal-Mart is a great idea as well, we do that one :) Also, I find those all-in-one truck stops good place (like Flying J- where there is a gas station, resturaunt, store, etc all in one place)- the restrooms are clean, and they usually have a video game area which is nice for the kids, and the kids like looking around the store........They are safe as there are usually a ton of travellers in them.

I find for my kids having snacks often helps break up the boredom in the car. I put different types of snacks in ziploc bags, and every hour or so will give them a bag.

HTH, have fun!


Kristi

Let's see....I bring the portable video player and a ton of videos, paper and colored pencils, workbooks that my dd can do herself with asking a few questions, sometimes the magna doodle or leap pad but my dd quickly bores of them. My dd now has one of those small coloring books of Dora with the crayons attached.

Then, I bring a bunch of snacks like carrots, crackers, trail mix (the one without the nuts). By careful if she eats in the car though. When my dd eats in the car I sit next to her. It just worries me with the risk of choking.

If we're traveling far I try to have a few new things as they'll hold my dd's attention for a bit longer. We make lots of stops and my dd runs up and down the sidewalks, lol.

Have a safe trip!!!!

yes, the big car trip, I know them well:D

Wikki Stiks are wonderful and no mess

Stickers (the sticker books that you can reuse are great)

A couple surprise *new* things...book, cd, toy (I use these when they are getting out of hand....OH MY GOSH, Look what I *Just* found:D )

Plain old singing out loud. For some reason we just don't do this enough except in the car so the boys are both entertained by it...especially brush up on 'repeat' songs and poems like
Down By the Bay and Going on a Bear Hunt.

New songs they've never heard...a refrain of an old 80's kids song about being a library book on a shelf came into my head on a trip to Colorado. The kids were fascinated by the song they'd never heard. School House Rock, Hap Palmer, all that stuff started flowing back to me and they were totally into it for over an hour.

Cookie sheet with magnets

chalk on black paper (won't melt in car like crayons and brushes off the car seat and clothes unlike markers:rolleyes: -- ask me how I know about the markers)

Big bag of coins and a plastic piggy bank. For some reason when my son was 3 he loved that. It also gave him a reason to get back *into* the car after a stop because he would get the change from Lunch or the gas station to put in his bank.

Extra maps from AAA. My 4 year old likes to pretend he's mapping out our route and my 21 month old likes to fold and unfold them. I say 'extra' because they are trashed by the end of the week.

Have fun! I actually love car trips, especially with the kids
;cool:
Jenn

We just got a portable DVD player recently for the car trips but I didn't want just movies so my dad made some movies for us that are just slideshows of our family pictures burned onto CD. It is awesome and the boys love seeing pics of when they were babies or when mom and dad were babies:p
Jenn

Carschooling, the book, and www.carschooling.com, have some great ideas for games and things you can do in the car.

Bubbles. Especially if you can get one of the no-spill bubble tumblers.

Remember those invisible ink books from when we were kids? They make some that will appeal to a small child - sort of like a coloring book, but the different colors show up when you color with the pen.

Don't suppose you have a digital camera? We let ours take pictures out the window. Keeps them busy for hours, and doesn't cost a bit if you already have the camera.

All kids are different, but one thing we were able to start with ours pretty young was eye spy type games. We would do the traditional eye spy, alphabet eye spy (I spy something green that starts with the letter 'T' - Tree!), twenty clues (like twenty questions, but they couldn't think of what to ask, so we supplied each clue and each child takes a guess between clues.)

We also started animal alphabet pretty young - ours are pretty into animals, so they loved this one, even though it was hard for them.

Tell stories from your childhood. Even if it's as simple as where you remember learning each song you sing. At worst it'll fill a few minutes, at worst, spark a conversation.

In the car, mine love jump rope rhymes - they love it when they get to the counting part. . . I'm sometimes tempted to teach 100 bottles of beer on the wall, but I won't ;)

Bad mommy alert ahead - I'll admit that in moments of desperation, I've let my kids use a tissue box full of tissues to have a "snowball fight". Remember that scene in Ramona Quimby? I now keep a full box in the car at all times. lol, let annabelle throw them at your brother :thumbsup:

Have fun.