We are going to the mountains in a few weeks, which will be about a 5 hour car drive. How you you usually keep your kids entertained/happy during long car drives? Any ideas for a 4.5 year old and a 1.5 year old. The older one will use the iPad for a while, do activity books, and probably play w her dolls. But I really don't know what my 1.5 year old will do other than fuss about being in the car!
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We had a long car trip over the holidays and loading up my phone (we connect it to the car speakers via blue tooth) with stories and kiddie music helped distract our 2.5 yo! We cut screentime a few weeks before so didn't want to give her an ipad or anything. I also brought a color wonder coloring book and markers, but she kept dropping/throwing the markers and it was too difficult. I just unearthed an old magnadoodle though, that would have been great for the car. We also planned our trip time to coincide with nap--sleeping is the best way to pass the time
ETA when lo was younger we had a little mini keyboard thing for the car--so annoying electronic toys with buttons is also a good distraction
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We have each girl pack a backpack of toys/books to play with in the car. It will keep them occupied for a few hours each. And snacks, we do a lot of snack eating to pass time. We also take a break every 2 hours or so, which keeps everyone more relaxed and gives smaller goals to work towards. And play I-spy. My older daughter (4.5) has taught her little sister (2) how to play, sort of.
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We have magna doodles and ipads and don't really need much more.
We just did Toronto to Rhode Island to Florida and back with just turned 1, 2, and 4 year olds. It was surprisingly not that bad. We tried to time things around them napping. We'd get in the car an hour or so before naptime and drive like the wind. My older two are ipad capable and the baby had bubble guppies episodes when she got fussy. -
For the 1.5 year old, try:
- an old wallet stuffed with business cards, used up gift cards, and paper play money (you can just print some out)
- a plastic jar (jelly or peanut butter) cleaned and stuffed (i mean stuffed! so it's hard to get things out) with junk toys - I've used things like pom poms, plush finger puppets, matchbox cars, plastic balloon weights, plastic animal figures...just be sure it's stuff you're comfortable with in terms of choking risk.
For the 4.5 year old...what about any of the magic ink coloring sets (Melissa & Doug make two kinds - one with one marker that colors different parts of the page a predetermined color, or one that comes with different colored markers and your child chooses where on the page to put the color - but at least they can't color all over the carseat/car/window
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We did a 10 hour drive at Christmas with our 1.5 year old. We woke her up and left early in the morning so she'd sleep a little in the car in the morning and still have nap time in the car.
I got a small cookie sheet that she could use as a tray on her lap in her car seat. She colored (crayons and color wow markers), played with cars on the tray, stickers, snacks, listened to kid's CDs, and I gave her a bunch of magnetic letters to stick to the tray. She also had fun taking the magnets out of the bag and putting them back. I also gave her a box of tissues and let her pull them all out and let her look at the pictures of herself on my phone. It was surprisingly easy!
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I had to break up a ten hour drive into two days each way for my 1 year old last year - it was a huge pain. The 5 year old did great, and would have been fine with 10 hours in the car. She had an old phone with videos and games and music, as well as books and coloring and such. So she was fine with stops to run around every few hours. But the baby just can't handle it yet.
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