Tenaj Posted December 8, 2015 Share Posted December 8, 2015 I'm hoping for a few 'new' (to us) suggestions. We have itouches and ipads and books on tape but I can only charge a few devices at a time (and my phone is priority - LOL!). Primarily this would be for my 8 yods and 6 yodd. I'll be packing a totebag for each with the standard activity books, crayons and pencils/pens but was wondering if anyone had any other ideas to keep these two entertained for longer than 5 minutes. 8 yo can read so I'll have some books packed but he's not really a strong reader yet so that won't work for long. 6 yo is just learning so that's not really an option. I'll go to the library and stock up on books on CD but something for their hands to move would be nice. While I'm asking, what's the best solution for my little gal who gets carsick on trips that are only 2 hours? We used Dramamine in the past but it makes her so dopey that I'm hoping for a better solution. Thanks so much, Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alisoncooks Posted December 8, 2015 Share Posted December 8, 2015 (edited) We have a lot magnetic travel games -- they keep my girls busy: http://www.amazon.com/Magnetic-Fun-Cars-Planes-Trains/dp/B000PV3S9E/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1449608723&sr=8-2&keywords=magnetic+travel+games http://www.amazon.com/Tangoes-TT300-Travel-Object-Puzzles/dp/B000SZW3Y8/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1449608723&sr=8-10&keywords=magnetic+travel+games http://www.amazon.com/Noahs-Ark-Magnetic-Travel-Game/dp/B0084ZGC00/ref=sr_1_19?ie=UTF8&qid=1449608822&sr=8-19&keywords=magnetic+travel+games Find It is fun, too. http://www.amazon.com/Find-Games-Kids-Version-Ends/dp/B0006HB9G6/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1449608947&sr=8-2&keywords=I+spy+jar Edited December 8, 2015 by alisoncooks 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tess in the Burbs Posted December 8, 2015 Share Posted December 8, 2015 we have magnetic travel games like hangman, tic tac toe. We have story cubes to tell funny stories. New books. We have a smell thing for carsickness. I found it at a drug store. Kinda roll it on your temples. I think it's peppermint and something else. Works on both my kids. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alisoncooks Posted December 8, 2015 Share Posted December 8, 2015 I get carsick, too. Other than Dramamine, hard candy has helped. Sometimes lemon drops, sometimes cinnamon candy. They make ginger pops for morning sickness that may help. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Junie Posted December 9, 2015 Share Posted December 9, 2015 Some of my kids like to play the Guess Who game in the car. http://www.amazon.com/Hasbro-HAS05801-05801-Guess-Who/dp/B00004XQX7/ref=sr_1_5?s=toys-and-games&ie=UTF8&qid=1449667627&sr=1-5&keywords=guess+who+game 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gingersmom Posted December 9, 2015 Share Posted December 9, 2015 License plate game My teenagers still play it in the car :) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FaithManor Posted December 9, 2015 Share Posted December 9, 2015 Travel "2 person" Blokus was a lot of fun for our kids. Where's Waldo books if they haven't already done them...kids can pass a lot of time searching for him. Children's sudoku is another good one. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sarah CB Posted December 9, 2015 Share Posted December 9, 2015 We like the sign game. My kids still play it on long drives. Also, you can print out car bingo sheets online for free. At that age the kids liked to play car bingo. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThursdayNext Posted December 9, 2015 Share Posted December 9, 2015 Audiobooks are our big standby for road trips. In fact, 4 out of 5 of us get excited about road trips, just to have the time to listen to hours and hours of books. And the kids always bring a few stuffed animals, or cars, or plastic animals for pretend play on their laps. We're going to do a 30 hr road trip soon. Do you know the classics? The alphabet game, the animal game, the "we went on a trip and we brought an antelope" game? When traveling the lonely highways of North Dakota, my dad would pretend we were on a train and blow the horn like a train whistle. In a heavily populated area, the license plate game is fun. How about printing a map and having the kids trace the route you travel, and coloring each state you pass through in a different color? I also go over memory work in the car. While not fun, it gives us something to do and we make good progress. I'm one who can't read or play games that focus my sight inside the car. To keep carsickness away, I have to look out the windows. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThursdayNext Posted December 9, 2015 Share Posted December 9, 2015 Oh, also there's singing annoying songs! Not every family would go for this, but my daughter and I have fun with it. Start with all the verses of Jingle Bells and end with the Song That Never Ends. While our youth group was traveling with our youth leader's large family, we learned a new thing. When their kids started fighting, poking each other, whining, the offending child had to keep his arms in the air for 5 min. Easier than threatening to stop the van. ;) It turned into a game though, with all of us teens seeing how long we could keep our hands in the air, with $5 of gas station stuff as reward. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
milovany Posted December 9, 2015 Share Posted December 9, 2015 ABC game (race to find entire alphabet on things outside the car) Pipe cleaners (different colors). These have kept my kids busy for a long time. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lady Marmalade Posted December 9, 2015 Share Posted December 9, 2015 (edited) I'm hoping for a few 'new' (to us) suggestions. We have itouches and ipads and books on tape but I can only charge a few devices at a time (and my phone is priority - LOL!). Primarily this would be for my 8 yods and 6 yodd. I'll be packing a totebag for each with the standard activity books, crayons and pencils/pens but was wondering if anyone had any other ideas to keep these two entertained for longer than 5 minutes. 8 yo can read so I'll have some books packed but he's not really a strong reader yet so that won't work for long. 6 yo is just learning so that's not really an option. I'll go to the library and stock up on books on CD but something for their hands to move would be nice. While I'm asking, what's the best solution for my little gal who gets carsick on trips that are only 2 hours? We used Dramamine in the past but it makes her so dopey that I'm hoping for a better solution. Thanks so much, Carsick prone kids need to not be handed a bag full of in-car activities for a ride, or there will surely be a reaction. I get carsick (as do my kids) and can do nothing that causes my focus to be in the car. No coloring, playing with small objects, and definitely no reading. Reading is the worst. You can Google for all sorts of games that require observation outside the vehicle. There's the alphabet game, which can be played over and over. Try it in reverse after doing it from A-Z. We play the license plate game on long trips- where we keep track of the states and provinces we see on the road. It's always great fun to find Alaska and Hawaii! There are printables out there for other games too. Friends of ours played the Slug-A-Bug game where a the beginning of a trip you make a prediction as to which color of VW bug you will see the most on your trip, and then you keep track along the journey of what color VW bugs you see. We kept track of music on our recent long journey. We kept turning to the top 40 stations and we kept track of those songs we heard all the time and how many times we heard them. It was amazing how many times we heard some! Mad-Libs can be fun for all if you have someone in the car who can do the writing and reading aloud without getting nauseated. Don't forget the merits of a well-timed, quick rest stop. Our 20 hour car ride we broke up into 2 to 4 hour sections at the most. We looked ahead along the way for rest stop ideas that were quick and free. Everyone has to pee sometime, so we'd try to wait until the next planned stop. But look for things like monuments, free parks, regional specialty shops, things like that. Made the ride SO much more pleasant, because every time we got in the car, we knew we only had a couple of hours until our next stop. They literally were quick stops. Time to use the bathroom, and then maybe ten minutes walking around and stretching. We tried to limit our stops to no longer than 30 minutes per stop. Edited December 9, 2015 by Lady Marmalade 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tree Frog Posted December 9, 2015 Share Posted December 9, 2015 When we were kids, my mom and dad wrapped little trinkets (inexpensive small toys, games, etc.) in newspaper. Each hour, when there weren't problems, we each got to pick out one item, unwrap it, and play with it. We worked hard to earn those little things and choosing which wrapped gift we wanted was half the fun (and usually took awhile.) My cousin traveled a lot with young kids. Each time they crossed a state line, they turned on a movie or video. When it ended, they couldn't watch another one until they crossed the state line again. We've played My Cows, which is useful when travelling through open areas. When ever someone spots a cow/bull/cattle, they shout "my cows!" and add one to their score. When we pass a cemetery, the person who calls "dead cows" keeps all their cows and everyone else loses all theirs. A church is "holy cow" and doubles the number of cows. We've also called "educated cow" when passing a school, but our most fun was when we drove through Roswell, NM. We kept seeing all the aliens, so we started calling "alien cow", which caused only Dad to lose half his cows. It's an easy game to personalize depending on where you're driving. My kids also play "skittles", which is just calling out skittles when they see a bright yellow, red, or whatever color the skittles candy is. I totally don't understand the fun of this particular game, but they've enjoyed it. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
indigomama Posted December 9, 2015 Share Posted December 9, 2015 (edited) Next week, we are moving from NE to CA, long drive! I have printed a bunch of travel games, I found free online. We have audiobooks, and regular books (though no reading for my carsick kiddo). I have little toys wrapped and I'll give some out each day (we are taking 3 days to drive). A huge bag of pipe cleaners (kids will sit and make things out of it for hours). A small bag of legos each for my older kids with a lego flat board (the flat green ones). Magnetic games. Magnadoodle. We have an old phone that isn't connected, but can take pictures, so the kids can document their trip. A printed map to track our journey. Edited December 9, 2015 by indigomama 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tenaj Posted December 9, 2015 Author Share Posted December 9, 2015 Thanks for all the suggestions. I had forgotten about some of the car games . . . we used to play the cow game on the way to our church and back when I was a little kid. I still laugh about that because we were small enough that we never remembered which side of the car was the "right" one even though it was a trip we made back and forth several times a week :) I'm really dreading the drive for my dd. Last night we had to travel about 1 hour to a basketball game on a winding, and hilly, two lane country state route and she got sick on the way back. I was prepared with a container for her but my 12 year old also got sick. Ugh!!! I finally pinpointed that most of the time she gets sick is on two-lane roads that have a few more curves than the interstate and only when my dh is driving - LOL! I realized last night that I have taken her in the same vehicle several times on the same paths without her getting sick but I tend to drive a bit more cautiously than my husband in the big van (12 passenger). He drives faster which gets the van really rocking around those curves and hills. I'm holding out hope that since our trip next week will be on the interstate that she will survive :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raptor_dad Posted December 9, 2015 Share Posted December 9, 2015 Take a frisbee or ball so they can run around for 10-15 minutes at rest areas. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lllll Posted December 9, 2015 Share Posted December 9, 2015 (edited) nm Edited December 14, 2015 by ^ 022 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lady Marmalade Posted December 9, 2015 Share Posted December 9, 2015 Lots and lots of music. All kinds. Even things you think they may not like. I used to check out lots of CD's from the libraries ages ago. I found some real gems that way. I think libraries still have CD's. My kids even discovered yodeling CD's that they loved that way. Both old Western yodeling cowboys and the European stuff (name escapes me now). Look for crazy stuff like that, too. And talk about the music - what they like about it, why (exactly) they don't like it (give them the words if they don't have them), what's that instrument, can you write some lyrics that rhyme, can you sing with it, etc. We used to count telephone poles on the little 2-lane roads. My mother's idea. I would lie down in the back seat with my legs up on the window or out the window (pre-seatbelt times ;)) and watch the poles go by. That was back when they had the gorgeous glass insulators and they were stunning when the sun hit them. Good times. :) http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=old+telephone+pole+glass+insulators&view=detailv2&qpvt=old+telephone+pole+glass+insulators&id=BB0FE534856FE8C52E62643458B268C562355E28&selectedIndex=1&ccid=%2fMUDxdDD&simid=608008632230019884&thid=OIP.Mfcc503c5d0c3a0b52ac39447ed1c2f8ao0&ajaxhist=0 Ha-ha! That totally reminds me... on our long trip we stumbled on an 80's station. I completely horrified my children by singing along, loudly to several strange songs they had never heard of. It was SO hilarious and fun. I tried it again when we stumbled on Van Halen later on, but they were quick to reach up and change the channel. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sweet Home Alabama Posted December 9, 2015 Share Posted December 9, 2015 For car sickness, look at Bonine. I've used it, and it worked well for me. I would think that it has doseages for kids. It did not make me sleepy. I would much prefer it over Dramamine. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tenaj Posted December 9, 2015 Author Share Posted December 9, 2015 For car sickness, look at Bonine. I've used it, and it worked well for me. I would think that it has doseages for kids. It did not make me sleepy. I would much prefer it over Dramamine. I have looked for this and couldn't find it. Would it be in with the herbs? Medicines? Behind the counter? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erica in OR Posted December 9, 2015 Share Posted December 9, 2015 For us, a sanity saver over the years with cross-country car trips has been a portable DVD player (with headphones) and Redbox. You can rent a video at one location for less than two dollars and return it at any other location. Erica in OR 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tenaj Posted December 9, 2015 Author Share Posted December 9, 2015 For us, a sanity saver over the years with cross-country car trips has been a portable DVD player (with headphones) and Redbox. You can rent a video at one location for less than two dollars and return it at any other location. Erica in OR I do like this idea and we have used pc's to do this but we have the same problem with batteries as we do with the rest of the electronics. Plus, we don't have a DVD mounted in the van so we would need multiples and multiple earphones (not sure how that would work. So at least three (one for each row - LOL!) so that's why we've stayed away from it. We should just pony up the money to have one mounted behind the front row of the van but even then, I'm not sure about the visibility all the way to the back row, and then the sound, and . . . I'm jealous of my Mom and Dad's new van, not a 12 passenger, just a mini but they have charger stations all over the van, front, middle and back. Maybe the next one . . . . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sweet Home Alabama Posted December 9, 2015 Share Posted December 9, 2015 It's OTC. Check any pharmacy. I have looked for this and couldn't find it. Would it be in with the herbs? Medicines? Behind the counter? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erica in OR Posted December 10, 2015 Share Posted December 10, 2015 I do like this idea and we have used pc's to do this but we have the same problem with batteries as we do with the rest of the electronics. Plus, we don't have a DVD mounted in the van so we would need multiples and multiple earphones (not sure how that would work. So at least three (one for each row - LOL!) so that's why we've stayed away from it. We should just pony up the money to have one mounted behind the front row of the van but even then, I'm not sure about the visibility all the way to the back row, and then the sound, and . . . I'm jealous of my Mom and Dad's new van, not a 12 passenger, just a mini but they have charger stations all over the van, front, middle and back. Maybe the next one . . . . We have two of the portable DVD units (not mounted), that each have more than one headphone jack in them. Instead of worrying about charging them or having batteries, we purchased a power inverter to plug into the power jack in the car. Then we are able to plug the wall plug chargers for the DVD players into that to keep them charged up. A kid (or two kids seated side-by-side) can use one on his or her lap with a cheap pair earbuds. Or sometimes if DH and I can stand it, we just let the sound roll anyway with no headphones. Just thought I'd throw those details out there, since it's worked well for us. :) Erica in OR 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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