Traveling with my kids!!

I wanted to do a travel post about some of the things I did with my kids on our trip.  We took a 5 hour drive to Salt Lake, a 4 1/2 hour drive to Southern Utah and then back.  So it was 4 different trips for us.  We have gone through at least 3 portable DVD players and I am done buying those, so we travel without movies.  This sounds crazy I know, but I knew if I was prepared we would have a great trip!  I found sooooo many ideas online, some of them were easy but some of them were way too complicated for me.  My sister's website Ivory Bloom has a wonderful post about her cross country trip and lots of fun printables for traveling with kids.  I used many of those  ideas and mingled a few of my own in there too!  Instead of boarder bags, I did city bags since we were going on smaller trips.  When we went to Southern Utah there were no towns, so every 30 miles or so we would hand out a bag.  Keep in mind my kids are ages 5, 8, 11, 12 and 14.  So you may need to adjust some of the activities for your children.  I'm surprised though that my older kids had just as much fun as my younger ones!!  

Supplies I used for the trips: 

Package of brown paper bags

Little notebooks (I found these in packs of 3 at our dollar store)

Snack size baggies

Crayons/markers/pens

Clothespins

Stickers

Various activities like window clings, sticker pages, games etc.

Various snacks.  (fruits, veggies, jerky, taffy, starbursts, crackers, goldfish etc..)

At the start of our trip I opened the bag labeled "Start"  Inside was a mini notebook and pen for each child and a visor clip.  

Inside the notebook there was an area to "earn" stickers by doing various activity sheets.

I also took the 50 license plate printable on Ivory Bloom and cut it up.  Each child had 10 license plates to find during our trip (since it was shorter I didn't want to give everyone all 50!)  By the end of our trip all the kids had found every plate in their book BUT Hawaii.  That's a hard one!

I also had a checklist they could refer to of what towns they would get a city bag.  This was really nice for the older kids, they were really excited when they saw a sign with the town name on it and the miles left. I modified it for the way home.  This is a trip to Salt Lake, but after driving it, I would add a Wendell bag between Mountain Home and Twin, a "half-way" bag between Burley and Snowville and taken out Layton.  I also added a temple checklist but you could do any kind of special landmarks you may see along the way.

These are the visor clips.  When a child was acting up I simply removed the clip.  Only two of my kids lost their clip and it didn't last long.  It was a pretty big deal.  The younger kids (who just live to obey the rules) would remind the older kids that they would lose a clip if they weren't being good.  I was amazed at how wonderfully this worked for all the ages!!!

I put this bingo game in one of the first bags.  They played it throughout our entire trip.  I found these at Powell's sweet shoppe, but I'm sure you can find them other places.  They were awesome!!!  We went for blackouts, and when the kids got one they got a mini candy bar from the cooler.  They switched boards throughout the trips as well.  Some were much harder than others. 

I needed new ideas for the way home, so I found this cheesy activity pad for 50 cents at a Family Dollar store.  It was awesome!!!  In each bag I put 5 of the sheets-one for each kid.  They had to complete both sides and would get a sticker to put in the front cover of their books.  All of the kids worked hard to make the pages fun and colored them really well too.  I thought they would just do it in like 2 minutes, but they took their time.  By the time they finished a page, it was almost time for another bag!!!  

Each "city" bag had a little snack for everyone.  By little, I mean a snack size baggie of chips or two salt water taffies, or one bag of fruit snacks.  It wasn't much at all, but it was like gold each time they opened one.  I have never seen my boys get so excited about two little candies, but they did on this trip!!!  I noticed we didn't eat as much on this trip.  Also, there are certain towns where we filled up on gas and in that bag I would put 2 dollars for each child in it so they could pick out a treat or drink at the gas station.  Another thing I did was put "car" game ideas in some of the bags.  Things like find words with the letters A-Z or numbers 1-50, or tell a story with each person saying one word (this was their favorite and they play it all the time now) 

I am actually looking forward to another road trip with my kids!  This worked so well and we all had a really fun time.  Hope this sparks some ideas for your next road trip!!!  Beth