Family Road Trip Activities and Free Printables

We recently went on a road trip. My husband has family in Western Kansas which is about a 12-hour drive for us. We don’t take that long trip as often as we like, but I would say that since having kids we’ve done a fair amount of traveling with little kids. Our vacations range from about 4 to 12 hours each way. For this particular trip, my wonderful and fearless husband was going to be making the return trip on his own with our three little girls (because he sent me off on my own mini-vacation to the Grace Agenda conference!). I wanted to be a little extra on top of things in order to make that solo drive as smooth as possible for him and I put a little extra thought into this trip. It paid off for our family and I am excited to share some ideas with you!

Here are my top travel tips from our family, travel activities for toddlers and little kids, and free travel printables for you!

7 Travel Tips

Have cheerful attitudes! There is nothing more important! I believe that as a mom I set the “emotional tone” for our family. If mom is cranky then everyone is miserable. If mom is cheerful there is hope for everyone! When moods sag low you need to do something to switch gears. A few ideas are singing songs together, playing Round Robin Gratitude (go around the car and share things you are grateful for – or excited about!), pray aloud for the trip, and ask God to help you all have joyful and kind hearts, and put on music that will change the tone (We love listening to Shane and Shane, the Gray Havens, or a favorite movie soundtrack – music does wonders to change your emotional state). There are also occasions where a humble apology from mom can make a significant change. If I’ve been a grouch there is no hiding it from my kids and my husband. When I apologize for my bad attitude it is like a weight lifts from our van – apologies are worth doing even when they are hard. It also sets an example for your family. If your husband has a bad attitude gently and lovingly let him know that it is impacting everyone, but you may need to turn up the music in the back so the kids don’t hear you – never correct your husband in front of your kids!

Get a car-top carrier or borrow one from a friend. We asked around at our church and had several offers for this. Having less “stuff” inside and more space made it so much easier to find what we needed during the trip. We will never go back to traveling without a car-top carrier or some sort of means of having our stuff outside of the main cab of our van! We used one like this and were able to fit a tent, lawn chairs, sleeping bags, an umbrella stroller, and two suitcases inside.

Create an organized packing list and keep your toiletries all separate from everything else. Before you start packing create a really good packing list. List everything you’ll need for your first hotel stay, then everything you’ll need for the next stay, and so on. Our last trip was complex because we were going to stay at a hotel, then stay at my in-laws’ home, then I was getting on an airplane to go to a conference while my husband was going to go camping and boating with our daughters. Having an organized list made a huge difference for us. Every trip is unique so there is no set way to do this. Just sit down ahead of time and think through the trip. I do recommend packing everyone’s toiletries separate from the rest of your luggage. That way you can easily fix a ponytail, brush teeth, find Dramamine or a bandaid, or access medications while on the road. We keep toiletries out of our suitcases. We also pack one communal beach bag rather than everyone having swimsuits in their personal luggage.

Plan great stops. People typically stop to eat, but consider that for young kids this often means they are taking a break from sitting in a car seat to sitting in a restaurant seat! Nonsense. If possible, eat while you drive and stop somewhere that kids can move around. A stop at a playground or a park works great. Some playground equipment companies have showrooms where you can pay a small fee to come in and play. If there is just nowhere to stop that will encourage movement make your own! Have your kids jump from one end of a gas station to the other. Play a very active version of “Simon Says” with them. It’s ok if you look like a dork – no one at that gas station will ever see you again and most of them will realize that you are being a great parent as you nerdily frog jump through the candy bar aisle.

Time your movies well. If you are going to have your kids watch a movie or a show use the technology sparingly. I like to pick one movie ahead of time and take note of the length. If it is an hour and twenty minutes I will start the movie an hour and twenty minutes before we arrive. As long as we haven’t been watching things the entire way, they are completely engaged for that last bit of the trip which means that instead of that being the hardest part of the trip it is the quietest! If you need some good ideas on what to watch you can read about some of our favorites here.

Buy food and snacks ahead of time. Gas station food is so incredibly tempting and it is so much more expensive than if I buy the same things at the grocery store. Ask your husband what he’d like to snack on and drink during the trip. Buy some novel treats and beverages ahead of time. Also, buy some healthy foods – deli turkey, blueberries, applesauce pouches, etc. and pack them in a cooler. Gut rot on the road from too much fast food does not make for happy travelers.

Take five minutes and tidy up at each stop. I used to always feel pressured to move as fast as possible at each stop but it is great if my husband can walk around a bit with the kids while I take five to quickly throw out trash and do what I can to make the back of the van less gross. We even have this little car vacuum that is so helpful! It is worth those few minutes to make the next stretch of travel more pleasant.

Road Trip Activities

I like to ration our activities throughout the trip so that my kids don’t burn through all the things to do and then complain of boredom for the last six hours. This method also makes it way easier to keep the back seat clean (or at least less of a disaster)! The way I do this is come up with about one activity for each hour of travel. I put the activities in separate gallon zip bags or in manila envelopes. The kids get one at a time and we put it away before taking out the next one. In each envelope or bag I include something for our 16 month old, everything they’ll need for the activity, and occasionally a piece of candy. If it is something that I print off like car Bingo I print enough to use on the return trip as well. Here are activities we brought on our last trip:

Extra Tips and Printables

We also had printables such as Car Bingo with post-it notes for the space covers, a Car Color Hunt where they had to find several of each color car and cross them off, and Alphabet I-Spy where they had to find each letter of the alphabet on signs and license plates. I have made my own and included them for free below!

We listen to podcasts and audiobooks. We enjoy the Lamplighter podcasts. Our favorite audiobooks are actually “radio dramas”. Try out the Focus on the Family version of the Narnia series. All their radio dramas are excellent, but they vary with what age they are appropriate for.

For the toddler – I included with each “big girl” activity some little item for my 16 month old. Board books, plastic animals, little magnet toys like these, a soft ball that I tied to the overhead handle for her to hit and swing around, a pack of cards from the dollar store that I let her destroy, one or two electronic toys, and a pop-it all were hits! I used the same method of putting one away and getting the next thing out every hour or so.

Snacks: I repacked ziplock baggies with some low-mess snacks for everyone. We don’t do free-for-all-snacking in our family but I let them just grab one of the baggies when it was time for a snack. Each kid also had some sort of no-spill water bottle.

Depending on where your kids are at on the diapering -toilet spectrum here are a few tips for that. Pack 5-10 wipes in a little sandwich baggie. Put the wipes, a diaper, and a onsie in a quart size bag. When you stop at a gas station you can just grab that and take it in rather than rummaging around for all the items you’ll need. Pack a few of those quart size baggies before your trip or replenish it.

If you’ve got a potty trainer bring a potty seat and line it with a diaper. If someone has to “go” where there are no places to stop you can have them go in the car without worrying about the potty or poo splashing out. The diaper lining the potty seat makes it so much easier to clean up.

If you wind up with a little kid who is going to have to pee in a corn field hold them with your hands under their knees (back toward you) and have their pants all the way down around their ankles. This is the best way to prevent them from peeing all over their pants and shoes (At least for girls – boys have no problem with this!)

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