Kids in the car

Looking at entertaining, educating and engaging our kids on car trips.

The car can truly be such a wonderful space for learning. Kids are stationary, there are less distractions and there is a huge variety of options of resources to engage in and conversations to be had. Even before we were travelling full time we spent a lot of time in the car and made good use of car learning. Driving to homeschool meet ups, which can often be spread out, boom! Car learning time. Trips to visit family. Driving to adventure locations. Family holidays. Even shorter car trips have ample opportunity for learning.

Car trips are also just a reality in the life of a parent (at least most of us). We need to get from a to b safely and need to keep our children entertained and happy to meet this goal. We all know that having screaming, whinging, fighting kids in the backseat is actually extremely distracting and dangerous so let’s try to avoid that with some easy ideas to make car trips as smooth as possible.

To give some personal context: My family is currently living in a caravan traveling all around Australia. Which unavoidably involves a lot of time in the car. My kids are currently 8, 6 and 2. My children have always been fairly decent travellers, without too much hassle and haven’t had any issues with car-sickness. We have been doing long car trips since they were tiny babies, I’m not sure if that has helped (i wonder if it has) or maybe we are just very lucky! I understand this is not the case for everyone but I hope these tips are helpful regardless.

Let’s start with listening options. One of our favourite car entertainment options is listening to something together. So many options! And most cars now have pretty decent sound systems or alternatively there are always headphones if you want / need more individual listening experiences.

I’ll share a few here but If you want a wide variety of specific resource recommendations I share them every single month in my resource round ups! I promise these posts are really worth the read.

Podcasts - Many educational podcasts are short, and to be honest for younger kids short is helpful for keeping engaged those with smaller attention spans. Podcasts can cover such a wide variety of topics and subjects and interest areas. It can lead to further discussion and investigation. They can introduce topics, ideas and interests that you otherwise might not have considered.  Some of our recent favourites: Curious Kid Podcast, Homeschool History, Tumble Science for Kids, Smash Boom Best! Notice how many subjects we can cover with podcasts alone! Incredible.

Audiobooks - again, the opportunities are endless! Borrowbox is a great place to find family friendly audiobook options but there are also so many other options. Most books are available in audiobook form these days and after all - listening to audiobooks is reading! Audiobooks are helpful for expanding vocabularies, being exposed to stories and content beyond current reading levels. Increasing pronunciation accuracy, teaching critical listening skills and benefits mental health. Plus so much more. Basically, audiobook listening is a huge win - for adults and children alike! In the last year we have learnt about classical literature, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Rome, Vikings, and learnt some basics of the Spanish language, all from listening to audiobooks! Our favourite audiobook listens from the last year:

Pages & Co by Anna James (series)

How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell (Series)

Meet the… (series) by James Davies

Spanish for Kids with Paul Noble

Ladybird Audio Adventures (series)

Car trivia - Okay so this is also sort of a podcast based activity but you could totally set up your own trivia to do in the car based on your family / children’s interests!

There are several family trivia / road trip trivia podcasts out there but the one we enjoyed most was Are We There Yet? (We listened on Apple Podcasts) I’m sure you could also find plenty of trivia questions online to print out too if you’re organised before trips (which I usually am not).

Music - Who doesn’t love a good road trip singalong?!

One of our favourite car activities is family jukebox. Where we simply go around and each choose a song to listen to. This keeps everyone happy because they are being heard and have the opportunity to listen to their chosen songs. It also helps avoid us getting stuck on listening to Baby Shark over and over again. My personal idea of hell if I’m being completely honest. And yes we should have just avoided our toddler ever hearing Baby Shark, and believe me - we did this with our older 2 children. But somehow (devastatingly) it slipped through with the 3rd child. You win some you lose some!

Learn some songs to sing along to together! Work on your harmonies. Why not?! You have the time!

Say what you will about Spotify, I know there’s some distinct pros and cons about the service but ya gotta admit there are some wonderful playlist selections on there these days. Search ‘family road trip playlist’ and you will find a wide variety of music options for any family. I personally think exposure to a variety of different music genres and popular culture is an important part of my children’s education.

Reading aloud in the car - Now this will obviously depend on a lot of things but if there is an adult or older child in the car that is able (providing they don’t need to drive or get terribly carsick) - reading aloud in the car is a great option. We only recently started doing this on suggestion from a friend but this has been a great extra time to get some reading in. Two books we read a good chunk of in the car were: Hedgewitch by Skye McKenna and The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis - both of which are excellent read aloud stories.

Individual books - This may or may not be appropriate depending on children’s age / reading level / whether or not they get car sick etc. Board books for toddlers, lift the flap / interactive books and picture books with simple sentence structures for older non-readers or kiddos that are just starting to click with reading and then any book of interest for the readers (my eldest has her own kindle so I try to keep that stocked with books to suit her). Fabric books and sturdy board books work well for toddlers… for my toddler anyway! She enjoys looking at books but is also known to destroy things so I try to keep this in mind when choosing books for her.

Old school car games - We love a good spot the windmill, eye spy, points for car colours game in the car. These games are easy, free and even if it only helps for 20 minutes that’s 20 minutes more than if you hadn’t utilised them at all! I’m sure if you do a google you could find even more of these sorts of car game ideas.

Kids travel pack - Something I’ve done for longer car trips. For us a ‘long car trip’ is driving days exceeding 3 hours in the car. We usually prefer to drive no more than 3 hours between spots, and most often even much less than that, but occasionally the situation arises where we do need to spend longer in the car in one day. In these cases I’ve made little travel kits for our kids. There has only been a handful of times that this effort was warranted but honestly was so worth it for the ease and calm it helped maintain during our longer journeys.

What to put in a kids travel pack? My tips are to keep it customised to your individual kids. I have a transformer obsessed little guy so in a travel kit for him i included a small transformer toy (from The Reject Shop for only a few dollars). One of the biggest hits for my eldest child was a mosaic sticker book that she revisited again and again beyond that one car trip.

A list of things to consider:

Sticker / activity book

Small fidget toy like a rubix cube or pop toy

Fun snacks

Small games (we have an eye spy car edition card game, a car bingo game and a noughts and crosses game and I’m sure there would be others that would also work)

Water painting books

Reusable sticker scenes

Magnetic drawing boards

Magnetic letter boards

Puppets

You could make up a kit with things you already own and have at hand, new things or a mixture of both.

Avoid things that will make a mess, cause stress or anything that may be a choking hazard.

Screen time - this is our last resort, everyone is losing it, time for the big guns option. Now I understand that some people don’t use screens at all (in the car or otherwise) and that others rely on screens for safe car trips. Zero judgements from me! This is simply what we’ve found works best for our family. (If you want to read more about our screentime approach you can find a full article linked below). Anyway! First option is either a movie or tv show for all kids to watch together as we drive. Recently my kids all like Izzy’s Koala World and Paddington Bear so these have been our car choices. Another option is an iPad board game like the Game of Life or Ticket to Ride junior which both have pass and play options so they can equally share. And then veryyyyy last choice is individual screens. Kids have recently been enjoying Bluey games and Subway Surfers on the iPad. They also have apps like Lingo Kids and Teach your Monster for more of a learning focus but once we’ve reached this point I’m usually okay for some mindless entertainment to keep everyone happy and to keep us rolling.

Leave some space for boredom - it’s okay for kids to be bored sometimes. I try to intentionally keep some car time free from active entertaining. It’s good for kids to sit and decompress sometimes without a screen or activity in their face. It’s good for them to notice things out the windows and to talk to their siblings or parents or fellow travellers. It doesn’t always work out but it never will if there is never the opportunity.

I know this sounds like a lot to organise. Feel free to pick one or two things to try next time you’re in the car. A lot of this is trial and error but if something here makes your next car trip a little easier and less stressful we can call it a win.

A couple more things to think about and yes, they are probably extremely common sensey but please:

• Remember to pack everyone a drink bottle

• Plan stops along the route (you don’t have to use them if the baby is sleeping and all the kiddos are settled but having some food spots / loo break ideas in mind can be super helpful)

• Have a snack bag that’s accessible. We often have things like fruit (peaches, berries, bananas), mini cucumbers, muesli bars

• Pop some good snacks in the glove box for just in case. I often have some lolly snakes or sesame snaps or some sort of snack that isn’t an everyday snack stashed away as a back up for car trips to pull out when the whinging gets too much or everyone is just well and truly over it (myself included)

• Take breaks when you get tired. Stopping at a playground can be a great option. Kids get to run. Everyone can stretch their legs. Driving is tiring work - look after yourself too!

Thank you for reading! I hope there was something helpful in there for you and your family to try out on your next car trip. If you found this post helpful please consider passing it on to a friend or sharing with your network. If you want more posts like this in your inbox please consider becoming a paid subscriber. All subscriptions are currently 75% off making a full year subscription only about $11! If you want a bargain - now is the time to upgrade.