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Tips for having the best, low-stress family road trip (including lots of car activities for toddlers and young kids)

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Tips for having the best, low-stress family road trip (including lots of car activities for toddlers and young kids)
 
Our family loves to travel, and our travels often include road trips.  After several successful road trips between Texas to California (including our family Route 66 road trip), we knew that we could definitely handle long car rides with the kids.  Now that we are veterans, we have learned some great ways to keep the kids occupied and make the trip fun for everyone. Today I’m sharing my tips for how we survived multiple 3,000+ mile road trips with toddlers and young children.  You’ll want to pin this post, as it’s full of car travel activities for toddlers and young children, pointers to keeping everyone sane, resources to keep your car organized during a road trip, links to free printable road trip activities, and fun ideas to make your next road trip (and every one after) the best family road trip ever!
 
You can also see these tips in these two videos on the Fab Everyday YouTube channel:
 
 

How to Survive (and Actually Enjoy) a Road Trip with Young Children

 
1) Take your time.  One of the biggest keys to having the best family road trip is to not try to rush through it.  Young children need a lot of breaks (bathroom, food, leg stretching and play time), so allow for that in your schedule, and you will be less stressed.  My husband and I try to average 6-8 hours of drive-time in a day on a road trip, which allows for plenty of stops plus some sight-seeing.  Some parents prefer to do no more than 6 hours, but we have had luck keeping it at a max of 8 (and sometimes 9 now that the kids are older, but that makes any sight-seeing difficult).
 
2) Seek out fast food restaurants with indoor playgrounds (like McDonald’s Play Places).  Even if you prefer not to eat fast food, you will appreciate a clean bathroom and a chance for your kiddos to burn off some energy and have some fun.  Here are our kids enjoying themselves at a McDonald’s in El Paso, Texas when they were little:
 
travel activities for toddlers
 
3) Pack lots of snacks – ones the kids actually like.  There’s a travel meme that says “If your road trip snacks don’t look like a 9 year-old was left unsupervised with $100, you’re doing it wrong.”  It is amazing what a snack can do to stave off a mid-drive meltdown, especially when it’s a super fun snack that they don’t get to eat all the time.  You also can’t worry about the mess.  The car will be a mess by the end of the drive regardless.  We make sure to pack all their favorites, including fun ones (like these cheese and crackers) that they don’t have often:
 
Tips for having the best, low-stress family road trip
 
Speaking of snacks, don’t forget to try unique, local foods found along the way.  This is a great way to further engage your kids in information about the cities and regions you are traveling through.  Look for things like local fruit, nuts, beef jerky, and things only found in certain regions.  When we were in Sedona, Arizona we tried fried cactus.  For the record, it was good!  It was like a cross between fried zucchini and fried okra.  The kids even gave it a try (check out their faces!):
 
road trip activities for the best family road trip
 
4) Surprise them with treats to open up during road trip milestones.  This is one of our all-time favorite road trip traditions, and we do it every single trip.  We have one to two “Do Not Open Until…” bags for the kids to open up each driving day.  We put a small dollar store toy in a paper bag with a label, and the kids open them up at specific points during the drive (I like to space them out every 2-3 hours).  It keeps them looking forward to opening their next goody and keeps things interesting.  When possible, we try to have a theme for the little toy (for example, a little alien figurine to open when we reached Roswell).  I have a free printable version of the bag label that can be printed on 2″x4″ labels.  You can download it for free here and fill in the blanks yourself.  If you’re looking for just one car activity for toddlers or young kids to take away from this post, let it be this one.  It’s a tried-and-true favorite.
 
car activities for toddlers
road trip car activities for toddlers
 
5) Plan for lots of kid-friendly car activities for toddlers.  I made these kid’s travel activities folders for each of my sons that includes crayons, coloring pages, blank drawing paper, stickers, and printable road trip games.  See some of the folder contents below, or click here to get the complete instructions for making a DIY road trip activities folder for toddlers and young kids.
 
travel activities for toddlers for the best family road trip
 
We put the printable car activities for toddlers in plastic sheet protectors so the kids could put stickers over the sheet protector, and remove the stickers if they wanted to play again.  Free printable travel games that we have in our road trip activities folders are this state license plate game, this road trip bingo game,  this slug bug game, and this I Spy game.
 
travel activities for toddlers
 
For coloring pages, we do a mix of road trip-themed coloring pages, coloring pages for the states or sights we were going to see, and coloring pages of characters and things they enjoy.  All of these were found online for free, and are great car activities for toddlers on road trips.
 
car activities for toddlers
 
fun family road trip activity: state license plate game
 
My husband and I always have a lot of fun with the license plate game.  We tend to take it much more seriously than the kids, and don’t even feel bad about it!  This post is all about how the whole family can have the best road trip, after all!
 
Tips for having the best, low-stress family road trip (including lots of car activities for toddlers and young kids)
 
The inclusion of stickers in the kids’ road trip activities folders gives your toddlers or young children an opportunity to decorate the outside of their folders, too.  Get the complete details for how to make DIY road trip activities folder for toddlers and young kids here.
 
6) Bring a bag of toys they don’t play with often.  This is another simple road trip tip for travelling with kids.  They could be new toys you save from their birthday or Christmas, or ones that they haven’t seen in a long time (think the bottom of the toy box).  “New” toys always seem to hold kids’ attention longer.  Just make sure you are not bringing huge toys, otherwise you may end up like this and sharing your seat with a giant dinosaur:
 
Tips for having the best, low-stress family road trip (including lots of car activities for toddlers and young kids)

7) Avoid meltdowns from dropped or disorganized toys AND provide a playing surface.  A great way to contain toys and create a nice play or drawing surface is to pick up dollar store cookie trays. Attach magnets to the bottom of puzzle pieces and matching games, as well as little toys like army men (the army men are a big hit with my boys!).  Tip: the magnets with adhesive did not stay stuck to the bottom of the army men.  They required some KraGle (Krazy Glue) to keep the magnets on.  It is worth the effort to do this, as the kids had so much fun with their magnetic army men.

Not just a road trip activities surface; these trays come in handy as a surface when you need to eat meals in the car, too.

 
car activities for toddlers for the best family road trip
 
Another way to contain toys, activities, and snacks are these Super Easy DIY Hanging Organizers.
 
 
8) Have a DVD player and/or a tablet available.  6-8 hours is a long time on the road each day for little ones, and a favorite movie, iPad game, or one of their favorite shows can hold their attention for a good amount of time.  If you want to have the best, low-stress family road trip, don’t underestimate the power of a movie or a game for a toddler travel activity!
 
travel activities for toddlers
 

9) Look for sights along the way that are interesting for children and fun for the whole family.  We love a website called Roadside America which can help you find roadside attractions, oddities, and points of historical interest on your route. For example, we’ve seen the world’s largest chili pepper, the country’s oldest road sign, the place where Clyde Barrow had his last bologna sandwich (as well as the spot Bonnie and Clyde were ambushed nearby), and so many more.  Here is a fun stop we made when we went through Roswell, New Mexico, which the kids just loved:

best family road trip: stop in roswell, new mexico
 
You can also use the time between stops to educate your kids on the next one.  I would read online articles about Roswell, the Grand Canyon, etc. to the kids before we got there to get them engaged.
 
Also remember that there are neat things to see even in the smallest cities.  For example, one year we found the “world’s former largest roadrunner statue” in Fort Stockton, Texas:
 
best family road trip: roadside attraction the world's former largest roadrunner statue in ft. stockton, tx
 
Some other favorites were getting to learn about local folklore, like the Boggy Creek Monster (AKA the Sasquatch of the South) in Arkansas and the Flatwoods Monster in West Virginia.  These are road trip activities that the kids will never forget, and they come with a side of history, education, and culture.
 
best family road trip: roadside attraction the boggy creek monster in fouke, arkansas
 
10) Allow for unexpected stops, too.  Since we live in Central Texas and rarely get the chance to see snow, we just had to stop and let the kids play for a bit when we saw a patch of snow just off the road during one of our trips.  This set our time back a bit, but as you can imagine, this ended up being one of the highlights of the trip for the boys.  Unexpected road trip activities can make for a lot of memories for toddlers and young children (and for mom and dad, too).
 
best family road trip

11) Make sure to budget for souvenirs.  When we can, we like to find small but special souvenirs from our journey.  It helps the kids remain connected with the trip for long afterwards if they can show their friends a special stone purchased at a national park, or a funny t-shirt from a new state they have visited.

12) Dress comfortably, and be prepared for different types of weather.  For road trips, go for comfort instead of “cool.”  Letting kids wear their favorite comfy clothes will save their and your sanity.  Having layers available is also good for bouts of unexpected heat or cold.  We had to stop at a Walmart along the way to grab gloves and knit caps during this trip when we were unexpectedly surrounded by snow:

13) When you need to stop for the night, request ground floor hotel rooms.  This is for a few reasons.  First, you have a lot of things to carry when you are traveling with young kids (including the sleepy kids themselves), so it is nice to avoid flights of stairs.  Second, you won’t have anyone under you to disturb when your kids stomp around.  Cars tend to lull kids to sleep, and that coupled with being cooped up for hours will mean your kids will want to run, bounce, and play by the time you get to the hotel each night.

 
tips for the best family road trip
 
Do you have any tried-and-true family road trip survival tips or favorite car activities for toddlers?  If so, comment below!  I’d love to try some new ones next time!
 

Family road trip ideas:

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  3. ramonaruby says

    @Natalie – thanks and I agree! You can't be too prepared! My kids also look forward to what I have planned for them next. It makes me so happy and proud! We are doing our next road trip in a few weeks, and I am trying to think up some new ideas!

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