Hellobee Boards

The sand would be a huge mess. She loves the Magna Doodle for car rides.

Kinetic sand is awesome, but it's definitely the kind of thing you want to either keep in a large receptacle, or play with outdoors. I agree that a doodle board is great. Our gal is just shy of two, and she really likes taking a drawstring bag of animals/dinosaurs/fairies in the car. The small ones that come in a tube are inexpensive and fun. Vinyl sticker books are also a hit.

We just got back from a 8hr (each way with a few breaks) road trip with our 27 month old over a course of 4 days. I went a little overboard but we survived the trip with no meltdowns. I filled his backpack with aqua doodle, lift the flap books, stickers, hot wheels, Lego duplo ice cream set, Melissa and Doug memory board game - he's a little too young but I had him lift all the doors and then I would tel him to find the pair of cows, cars whatever and he would close the doors for them until all the doors were closed, and some random party favors and dollar store stuff (there was this rubber duck that squeaked and lighted up and also had this stretchy yo-yo like string that he had great time with. He also loves tow trucks and construction trucks so we got a set of those which he was able to do more with like hook them to each their rather than just roll around hot wheels. Also gave him a wallet with lots of those fake credit card advertisement cards. Oh and don't forget lots of snacks. We stopped in a target before heading back and let him pick something from the dollar spot. He picked a beach bucket and shovel set and pretended to dig and scoop for half hour or so. Half and hour for $1 was fine by me! then he napped for about 2 hours then we stopped for gas and lunch. He only had no more than an hour each way of iPad time. So that was very successful in my opinion!