10 Things to do in a Car with small children

I just did a big trip with my 3 kids (age 4 (nearly 5), 3, and 3 months – Melbourne to Newcastle then back again 2 weeks later. I had my mum with me for the first half of the first leg then did the rest on my own. I did each trip over 2 days and actually used a lot of the activities above – eye spy is a big favourite, they also did lots of drawing (I bought them activity packs which hang over the front seat and give them a ‘desk’ to write on and somewhere to put all their pencils. The 2 kids each had their own lunch box which I refilled at each stop so they could eat whenever they wanted to. We sang lots and made up a great game where we replaced all of the nouns in ‘Hey Diddle Diddle’ith things we could see out the window – had us all luaghing for ages (eg Hey Diddle Diddle the car and the truck, the sign jumped over the bridge…) Both kids picked up the idea really quickly. I think the othe important ting that made the trip possible was to have long rest stops – I’d leave early and try to time stops around the baby’s feeds (although would just pull over as soon as anyone needed to go to the toilet) – then when we stopped at a rest area we’d all eat, go to the toilet, eat some more then have a good run around – I usually stopped for about 90 mins and that was enough for everyone to feel comfortable getting back in the car and driving for a few more hours

yeah I was a bit nervous doing it on my own but it worked quite well (once they were all strapped in it wasn’t too hard!!!) I thought of a couple of other games we played – we each picked a colour and then waited to see cars of that colour come past – with kids that age it doesn’t need to be a competition, everyone just gets excited when anyone’s colour comes past – and we picked things to count – windmills, herds of cows, trees (that one got hard really quickly (Miss 4’s idea, and she abandoned it when we just couldn’t count them), bridges etc. She was actually really good at keeping track of how many of each thing we’d seen, and it generated a lot of conversation.

We’re going away again this week but I’ll have my husband with me this time so it will be easier, but will definitely use all those activities again – and I love the idea of little bags and containers etc, that would be great for my son in particular, will try that one this time too.