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Summer Travel: Activities Keep Kids Involved in Family Road Trips
Jun 15 2009 by Kristin Varela
At this stage in the game, we all know that the economy is in terrible shape, but how will it affect summertime family vacations? Most likely, many of us will be passing on air travel in favor of family road trips. Long car trips are a chance for some family togetherness, but how can parents help school-age kids make those memories last forever?
Here are a few ideas to keep young kids engaged along the trip and involve them in preserving their own road trip memories. Next week, we’ll have ideas for the hormonal and sometimes temperamental teen set.
Maps, Stickers and Highlighters: Take some time before the trip to print out a map of your planned route. You can do this at any number of online websites, including Google Maps and Mapquest. AAA also offers an online mapping service, or if you have some free time before your trip you can go to a local AAA office where they’ll print and bind a map of your route for you. Get a slew of colored retractable highlighters, which are great because there are no caps to lose under the car seats, and help your youngster follow your daily progress by highlighting each day’s driving route with a different color. You can also help them mark special points of interest with scrapbooking stickers. Did you see an abundance of cattle one day, or was there a fun rest stop or picnic area at a lake or river? Let your little ones place a corresponding sticker on their map.
Travel Journal: A blank notebook can become a journal about your family vacation. Kids can keep track of the trip by coloring pictures of landmarks, writing about events along the way and collecting tickets from attractions as well as bits of nature from picnic areas and rest stops. They can also glue on small maps ripped from travel pamphlets that were gathered along the way. A little pencil box equipped with colored pencils, scissors and a glue stick will help with the scrapbooking.
Landmark iSpy: Put together a booklet of the landmarks you plan to pass on your route, along with a hint or clue for each one. Have older kids read the booklet’s hints to younger kids and turn it into an iSpy game. At the end of the trip, you’ll have a booklet of memories from your trip.
Road Trip Playlist: Before you leave on your trip, do a little research on geographically-themed music that corresponds with your route. You can burn a CD or create an iPod playlist and play it later along the road trip. Older kids can help research the music and preview the choices for songs that everyone in the family will like. A few suggestions: “Rocky Mountain High,” “Sweet Home Alabama,” “Georgia on my Mind” and “Oh, Shenandoah.” I also found a great website — SongsForTeaching.com — with a ton of fantastic suggestions along these lines.
Digital Photos and Videos: Bigger kids will be excited to be put in charge of the family digital camera for some parts of the trip. Let them take silly pictures and/or video of the family in the car, attractions along the way and rest stops. You can use all of this material later to throw together a trip memoir. My daughters and I do this together after a trip using the iPhoto program on our Mac. Making a picture book is as easy as dragging and dropping photos, and then pressing the “order” button. There are also websites, including ShutterFly.com and SnapFish.com, where you can upload your photos and create your own photo book.
Do you have other suggestions for involving kids in your family road trip? Share them with us in the comment section below.
