Travel Long Trips With Toddlers

In preparation for a 20 hour car trip with a 3 1/2 year old and a 1 1/2 year old (crazy, I know), I looked for a lot of information on the web about fun things to do in the car.  There's not much out there -- at least for children with an attention span of 5 minutes or less.

So in addition to the DVD player with some new movies and some new CDs of music (I highly recommend Disney's Greatest Hits), there were a few other things that came in handy for the little ones.

1.  Pipe Cleaners.  Who would've thunk it?  I think with older children it would be even more successful but after a 12 hour day, when my little one lost it and we had just an hour to our destination, I pulled out the pipe cleaners and the crying stopped.  She was fascinated for about 10 minutes and that 10 minutes was enough to distract her from her misery for the last 50.

2.  A box of tissues.  If you're little ones are like mine, unsupervised time in the bathroom results in toilet paper and tissues strung everywhere.  You should have seen the look on my daughter's face when I actually handed her a box of tissues.  She went to town pulling them out, putting them on her head, ripping them apart.  It was fabulous.

3. Touchy-feely books.  There is a great series of fun books that are titled That's Not My . . . (fill in the blank).  Every page has a reason why that's not my (puppy, kitten, dragon, fairy, whatever) with a touchable part.  Another good one, Feely Bugs.

4.  Sippy cup leashes found here and those little linky rings for baby toys.  Both were awesome for keeping drink cups and snack cups contained!

5.  Rest stops.  We need more of these in America actually but Kansas, Michigan, and Arkansas had the best ones.  Kansas and Arkansas had the most frequent ones.  Oklahoma and Missouri were both devoid of all rest stops and that was very frustrating.

6.  Magnet games.  I wish I had thought of this before the trip but I had one book: Muddle Farm

that has animal magnets to play with on the pages.  I should have taken a small size cookie sheet and attached small magnets (probably the kind that come in a sheet and have adhesive on the back) to paper dolls for my 3 year old to dress up dolls without losing the pieces.  Well, I know what I'll do next time (if there is a next time -- that's a darn long trip!).

7.  If your kids are old enough not to eat them, take a box of mexed up fun little things -- mini-erasers, pom-poms, beads and string, etc. for them to mess around with.  It will be all over your car, I promise, but it will keep them entertained.

Any other ideas?  I'll pass them along.

For Traveling

A friend of mine had this fantastic idea for long trips that I thought I'd pass along.  It would work best with elementary school-age children, although I plan to use it with my 3-year old the next time we go across states because she loves to color.

If you're not familiar with it already, Crayola has a website with coloring pages, crafts, and lesson plans.

If you click on coloring pages on the left-hand side and then on "learning", they have a category for states.

Print a sheet off for every state that you will drive through.  When you get to that state, give your child the coloring page.  They have the state flag and then birds, animals, flowers, etc. that are the "official" whatever for that state.  

Not only does your child get something new to do, it marks your movement to your destination and gives you something to talk about.

There are also categories for landmarks, geography, and places and of course they have pages with Disney characters, holidays, seasons, sports, etc.

A Lapdesk for Travel

If you're a fan of FamilyFun Magazine, you've seen that their "Badges of Fun" program for August is to take a road trip.

When I saw the idea for the laptop desk, I got really excited!

In fact, I have this bad habit of buying fabric for intended projects that I never get to.  So this made me feel a little better since I actually used some of that fabric (that yes, had been intended for something else.  Guess I'll just have to buy more!).

It's a simple project where you make your own pillow and glue it onto a clipboard but I thought it needed some slight modifications . . . 

Oh, wooden clipboard?  Hard to find!  Walmart though carries pretty much everything and it was only $1.63.

Anyway, modifications.

My 3 year old loves pillows, being cozy, and small things.  I figured she would have a major meltdown if she had a cute, small pillow covered in cupcakes that she couldn't cuddle with.  Solution?  Velcro.

I just happened to have some leftover super-soft velcro from another project (that actually used what I purchased for it) so it was an easy fix to sew the soft side onto the fabric before sewing the pillow together.

Once the pillow was sewn and stuffed, I laid the grabbing strip of velcro (do you love my technical terminology) on top and spread it with tacky glue.  Then I placed the clipboard on top and weighed it down with some heavy books over night.

Voila!  A traveling lapdesk . . . 

 And a nice little pillow covered in cupcakes.  I can't wait to see how it works (update to come!).