How to Keep Children Happy on a Driving Vacation

My family spent many years living 8 hours away from the rest of our relatives, so every holiday and summer vacation involved an 8 hour car trip with three kids smashed together in the back seat of a station wagon. Do family road trips have to be excruciating? Do kids have to dance on their parents' and siblings last nerve just because the vacation involves a lot of driving? Not with some attention and pre-arranged activities. The key is to keep the kids too busy doing planned activities to know they are confined in the car for several hours of their vacation.

Which leads to the eternal question: what does one do to keep kids busy on a driving vacation? Some children will curl up with a book and happily devour a story for the trip, but many more can't read because of carsickness or age. Books are out? Well, read on, there are ways of surviving the family's vacation road trip.

First, an answer to the question, "Are we there yet?" My dad handed over his watch when we got in the car, and told us what time we'd be 'there.' We were then not allowed to ask any question relating to arrival or travel time. It worked.

Sing songs. Our family's driving vacation heyday was before Barney's time (or any subsequent preschool hero) so our songs were a wonderful mixture of pop music, folk songs, show tunes, and what I've come to suspect are drinking songs. Some of our favorites included Lilly the Pink, Roll out the Barrel, 100 (or fewer) Bottles of Beer on the Wall, and k-k-k-Katy, Beautiful Katy. It's a good idea for sanity's sake to not use any punk tunes or anything which requires a rebel yell.

Coloring books are nice (and quiet), but don't plan on them occupying most children for more than 15 or 20 minutes at a time. Try magnets. Ask your younger children to find 5 things that magnets won't stick to. If you, like my dad, see everything as a teaching opportunity this is a great time to bore your kids with an explanation of polarity and magnetics. A nice variant of this is to make a magnetic fishing pole and toss items for which they can 'fish' into their area. Make it a contest, with whoever wins getting a small prize or getting to choose the next game.

Play games with other cars' license plates. See how many states your kids can spot, challenge your spelling children to find all the letters needed to spell words, or look for license numbers which can be read as a word.

Play the alphabet game with each person naming a member of the chosen group (food, animals, plants) which begins with their letter. Apricot, bannana, chocolate, etc. My favorite, then and now, is the rhyming game. This is basically where you and the kids find words or phrases which rhyme with each other. As abilities grow, trying to make rhyming sentences which make some sense is fun, too. Even as an adult, I find the rhyming game a wonderful way to keep busy when driving long distances.

If the kids are a little older, try a new hobby like knitting or origami. Younger kids can knit using a machine, available from most craft stores. While you've got the yarn out, dig deep into your childhood memories (or get a book) and teach your children the string games you used to play.

We were a reading family, and despite the fact that my two siblings tended to carsickness, we did manage to read by having the non-sickly parents and child read aloud.

Tell a story together. Each member tells one sentence in turn, and after each person has had 2, 3, or 4 turns (depending on the children's abilities) the story has to be finished. This is a good game to get kids planning things and understanding how a story is put together.

There is one activity for car rides which is so easy that I hesitate to mention it. For children who don't get carsick, a portable DVD player will keep them occupied for hours.

Whatever you do to keep the kids happy in the car, try to remember that the best vacation isn't about doing things or getting there quickly, but like life, is about the journey.