In the course of logging about 60,000 travel miles with my kids in the past eight years, I've found that most complaints can be tempered with simple solutions that can actually make it fun to travel as a family. A good game, for example, makes the miles fly by. In addition to games, I've developed many activities and strategies designed to amuse the most bored backseat passengers (click on the following links to see them all: audiotapes for the road, car-ride treats, classic road-trip games, getting-to-know-you games, inventing, finding and counting games, scavenger hunt for the car, scavenger hunt for the plane and tray-top games). I hope they'll help smooth your own family's journey.
IT'S IN THE BAG
Pack a special travel backpack for each child that he or she can carry onto the plane or bring in the car. Each kid's pack should have a variety of art supplies, toys and books.The hardest part for me is limiting what I include in these packs, because they don't work when they're too heavy or crammed. I also don't want to pack anything too messy or objects with lots of pieces that could get lost. Here are the items that seem to work best:
• A pad of paper, along with some markers, pencils and pens for playing games like tic-tac-toe and hangman. Kids can also use the markers to turn paper lunch sacks into puppets.
• Colored pipe cleaners for bending into different creations. My kids have made farms, complete with the farmer; wedding parties (we must have been en route to a wedding); and sculptures of our family. A small pair of scissors is handy for cutting the pipe cleaners.
• Pack kazoos for everyone, so you can have fun jamming together.
• A deck of cards and a few small action figures or dolls. Let your kids pick toys from their own stash.
These ideas are geared especially to young kids:
• Pack some stickers. Kids enjoy using them to create designs on paper.
• Gift wrap a few of your child's toys and bring them on the trip. Kids love to open presents, and the activity is a pleasant way to pass the time. Once, when Kaela was younger, she squealed with delight as she opened a small doll she'd owned for about two years, saying, "I have one just like this."
TRAVEL TIP: For more inspiration, I often turn to three guides by Klutz Press: PIPE CLEANERS GONE CRAZY, THE STICKER BOOK and KIDS TRAVEL.
When she isn't kazooing with her backseat passengers, Susan Fox is a freelance writer in Palo Alto, California.
Updated August 2005.
