Travel Fun

It is summer and a great time for families to travel together on great adventures. There are lots of great places to go: trips to visit family, trips to area attraction or trips to national parks and monuments. I hope you have some fun trips planned for your family.

We recently took a road trip with the whole family. Road trips can be challenging, especially with children. Today, I would like to share with you some fun things that we do on our trips to keep the time moving quickly and the adventures positive. I like to think that our vacation begins the minute we start out of our driveway. I try to plan things that the whole family can be involved in, so we are making great memories together even when we are on the road. We do have a DVD player, but limit the number of movies we watch on each trip. I, of course, did not "invent" all of these ideas on my own, but I am happy to share the wisdom of my friends and our experiences with you.

Activity Bags:
-We have two different types of activity bags. We ask the children to pack their own activity bag (however, now that our family is so large, we ask them to share bags). These bags are filled with books, coloring stuff and other activities that can easily be done in the car. They keep their bags near them in the car and can access them when ever they are feeling bored.

-The second type of activity bags are items I keep with me. I have a few items in large zip lock bags or just in my bag that I pull out when everyone needs a little boost. These would be items the children will not be expecting or are new to them. On this last trip we had new sticker books, glow bracelets, fun snacks, chenille crafts and gel pens.

Audio CDs:
-We take the opportunity to listen to great audio CDs on long trips. We love "Adventures In Odyssey," "Jonathan Park," and classic literature books. We usually get these items from our local library. These are made for children, but are extremely interesting. My husband and I enjoy them just as much as the children. These also usually lead to some great discussions about faith, friendship and character.

Car Games:
-There are tons of car games available these days. It will only take a few moments on the internet and you will have more games then you could possibly need. Some of our favorites are road bingo, the alphabet game and guess the mileage. When discussing games with a friend, I discovered that our family's alphabet game is much different then the one others play, so I am going to share it with you.
Our alphabet game moves around the car and gives each person a chance to share their thoughts. If I start, I would have the letter A. I need to think about the letter A and decide the answer to three questions. Where would I like to go? How do I plan to get there? What am I going to buy? If I have A, I would say something like: I am going to take a trip to Australia, I am going to take an airplane and I am going to buy an apple. The next person now has the letter B. Maybe they will say they are going to Bobby's house, they are going to take a boat, and they are going to buy a ball. Then we move to the next person who has the letter C, and so on. The only rule is that your answers need to start with the letter you have been given. We do make some adaptations for very small children, as a word may sound like it starts with a K when actually it starts with a C; and for the letter X, each answer must have an X in the word, but does not need to start with X. We have a great deal of fun with this game. Try not to get caught up on logistics. It is ok if a child wants to go to Hawaii and get their by horse. They both start with H and the child did a good job to think of them. Some of those types of situations, really help to make the game funny and keeps the game moving.

Trip Tracker:
-This last trip, which was over 29 hours in the car, we used a trip tracker. Great idea! We took some time to look at the route we would be taking and printed the name of a city we would be passing through about every 30 to 45 minutes. One of our daughters took the names and attached a small piece of velcro to the back. She then attached the names of the cities around the top of the inside of the van in the order that we would be passing through or stopping at them. She also printed a picture of a van that looks just like ours. She attached velcro to that as well. The velcro van started under the city of our home town. As we traveled, we would move the van to the next city when we reached it. Each child was given the chance to move the velcro van a few times as it past by the area where they sat. It was great fun! The children new exactly how much farther we needed to go, how long it would be until we stopped and there we no times of asking "are we there yet?" We really love this idea and will certainly be using this activity again.

Every type of travel is an adventure. I pray that you and your family have an amazing time making memories together and making the most of your travel experiences!