Family road trips can either go well, or they can go the way you expect them to go. That’s why preparation for all that time traveling in a car with children is key. Where your children are entertained, stress levels will be kept to a minimum. You’ll also have more time to focus on any potential issues on the road ahead – because sometimes, unfortunately, other drivers can cause accidents (speak with a Euless car accident lawyer if you’ve been affected).
Family Road Trip – Ways to Stay Sane
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Charged devices and headphones can buy you an hour or two
Kids love to watch their favourite movie over and over again. They love to watch their favourite TV shows over and over again, too. That’s why you’d be missing a trick on any family road trip if you were to fail to charge your children’s devices and download kids’ movies and kids’ TV shows before you leave the house. Although no parent wants their child glued to a screen for multiple hours per day, road trips can, admittedly, be more than a little boring for the small folk occupying the back seats of your family car – it’s perfectly acceptable to encourage them to lose themselves in a movie for 1-2 hours while you clock up a peaceful stretch of your journey.
Make sure you take along fully charged portable chargers – some chargers can store multiple charges, meaning that the ‘device and headphones and movie/TV show’ combo can save your child from boredom over many days.
Eye spy with a difference
Everybody knows how to play the classic game of eye spy. And we’ve all relied on it to pass some road journey miles from time to time. However, the only problem is that children generally can’t spell very well, especially where the words involved begin with letters that can be easily confused, like ‘m’ and ‘n’. That’s why you should consider playing alphabet eye spy, where each person in the car has to pick something with the letter A, then B, then C, etc. This can build confidence with spelling while adding an element of difficulty to the otherwise straightforward game.
Number plate bingo
Choose a word. Any word. Perhaps choose the name of the destination town or city. Next, look out for car number plates that start with the first letter of that word. Work through all the letters of the word until you have a winner who spotted most of the letters. Add some suspense by giving double points for the last letter where that will create a draw situation, leading to a tie-breaker bonus game of number plate bingo.
Children love to play the “would you rather” game
Write down ten or twenty ‘would you rather’ questions and ask your oldest child to tread them out, one at a time. Questions could include things like “would you rather have wings or would you rather have the power of invisibility?” and “would you rather only eat ice cream or cookies for the rest of your life?”. The sillier the questions, the more your children will love to play along.