Headed out on a family road trip? Read this post to learn how to make a road trip activity box to help your young kids pass the time!
Does the thought of multiple hours in the car fill you with excitement… or dread? Long car rides can be boring for anyone, let alone a small child who is full of energy and still learning self-control! If you’ve decided to embark on a family road trip with young kids, you might be looking forward to the driving portions of the trip with apprehension. How can you help your little one(s) pass the time without spending hours upon hours on an iPad*?
Enter the activity box.
Absolute lifesavers during our vacations to New England and Quebec, drives to visit family, and everything in between, our kids’ road trip activity boxes are chock full of travel-friendly toys, games, and… well… activities that they are only allowed to play with during long car rides.
Today, I’m sharing some of my favorite items to pack in road trip activity boxes for young kids, roughly defined as those in preschool and early elementary school. E and S were five and three, respectively, when I last refreshed their boxes with the suggestions below.
All of our boxes’ contents are easily obtained at places like Target, Walmart, Amazon, or your local dollar store. I’ll admit that I am not a crafty mom, but if you are (teach me your ways!), there are also plenty of ideas out there for DIYing activities or creating crafts/projects for kids to do on the go. I’d love to hear your success stories (or any funny failures) if that happens to be your jam.
But for now, join a non-crafty mom as she shares her favorite car activities for young kids!
*I am by no means shaming iPad use on long car rides! We purchased an iPad mount for our vehicle that allowed the kids to watch a couple of movies over the course of our long drives, and it was a big hit. We just knew that we didn’t want them to spend 6-8 hours per day staring at screens.
Tips for Assembling Your Activity Box
1.) Use Novelty to Your Advantage
As much as you (and your budget) are able, maximize the impact of your kid’s activity box by stocking it with new-to-them items and not letting them see or play with it before you leave. Don’t underestimate the power of novelty to hold your child’s attention and create excitement!
2.) The Dollar Store is Your Friend
Your local dollar store is one of the best places to find supplies for a road trip activity box for young kids. Not only will it save you money, but you won’t have to stress about anything getting lost or broken.
3.) Choose the Right Container
We use 5.8 quart Sterilite bins (purchased at Target and similar to this one) for our activity boxes. The size and shape is perfect: big enough to hold a decent amount and wide variety of stuff, but also flat enough to slide under the front seats and out of the way. They also stack well on the middle seat between our kids’ car seats, and have taken some beatings without being much worse for the wear.
4.) Buy a Lap Tray, Too
Your kids will get the most out of their activity boxes if you also invest in a lap tray for each of them. These trays fit over car seats and provide a large, flat, walled-in surface for all manner of activities. They’re one of my favorite pieces of travel gear for toddlers and young kids!
5.) Every Kid is Different
Yours might spend hours playing with something that my kids were bored with after five minutes. (Looking at you, Wikki Stix.) While the list below should get you off to a great start, assembling the perfect road trip activity box for your particular child may take a bit of trial and error!
Road Trip Activity Box Contents
Coloring Supplies
Our kids spend hours coloring, and our trip to Quebec was no exception. A thick coloring book, with lots of different pages to color, and plenty of crayons or colored pencils will go a long way in keeping your young kid occupied. Now that our kids are a little older, I prefer to bring colored pencils on road trips because they’re less messy and won’t melt into a car seat, cup holder, or floor mat on a hot day. Just make sure to bring a sharpener! If you want to go the crayon route, I recommend Twistables.
Crayola sells some great coloring books with anywhere from 96 to 288 pages (available on Amazon or at Target or Walmart), but dollar stores are also good places to stock up on books for cheap.
Magazines
Magazines are great for long car rides because they are thin and lightweight, colorful, and educational. Perhaps best of all, though, they’re recyclable/disposable, so you don’t have to fret about them getting destroyed along the way. We’re big Highlights fans around here (our kids were in the High Five age range on our trip to Quebec, and we loved Hello when they were babies), and we also were gifted a subscription to Ranger Rick that the kids have enjoyed, as well.
Toy Cars
Perhaps it was because they had discovered the new (at the time) Hot Wheels show on Netflix just before we left for Canada, but the toy cars in the kids’ road trip activity boxes were a big hit. I appreciated that the cars were small, easy to pack, and relatively noise-free; the kids liked that their lap trays made perfect racetracks.
Note Pad, Pencils, and Eraser
When your child tires of coloring pre-set pictures, a note pad is great for free drawing, note taking (real or imagined, depending on the kid’s age), stickers, and more. I like to pack mechanical pencils because they are always sharpened and ready to go, and I prefer to tuck in a big eraser to save the pencil-top ones from big jobs.
Stickers
What kid doesn’t love stickers? Especially if you pack a note pad, above, a couple of sheets of stickers can keep a child occupied for a good while. A dollar store is a great place to pick up a bunch of random stickers for very little money.
Another option would be to buy some sticker books, especially reusable ones, Colorforms, or Paint-by-Sticker books depending on the child’s age. S loves this Disney Princess sticker book, though it’s relatively big and heavy and didn’t make the cut for our trip.
Small Puzzle
If your kid is old enough and has a lap tray, a small puzzle can be a perfect way to pass some time. While I picked up our puzzles at a dollar store, they also sell magnetic puzzle books that are much more car-friendly!
Books
When creating activity boxes for my young kids, I also like to throw in one or two brand new (to them, at least) books. For E, this was a five-stories-in-one Spidey book handed down from his older cousin. For S, I held back a couple of our monthly books from the Dolly Parton Imagination Library. (If you haven’t yet, you should definitely check to see if this program is available in your area! It delivers a free book every month to children under age five.)
You can choose any books you’d like based on your child’s age and interests, but I recommend paperbacks because they’re lighter weight (and usually smaller) than hardcover.
Playing Cards
I’ve been playing easy card games with my kids for years, so they were ecstatic to find brand new decks in their road trip activity boxes. E attempted a round or two of solitaire, though, admittedly, it was a bit hard to keep the cards organized on his lap tray. Go Fish was a big hit, though, and they even managed to play War (which somehow came to be called “1-2-3 Flip” in our house) a couple of times.
Other card games like Uno could also add to the backseat fun!
While this was a great addition to our boxes, you should be warned that there are two risks associated with packing a deck of cards for your child. First, if they fall, it’s a BIG mess, and second, it’s not hard for younger kids to lose cards in the car, rendering the deck less (on un-) usable.
Road Trip Bingo
My sister Brooke gifted the kids a pair of road trip bingo cards for our trip and they have been the biggest hit! E and S loved ticking off the various things we saw along the way. They didn’t care so much about completing rows to get bingo – or competing with each other – but rather trying to see and cross off as many of the items as possible. I also liked that this game lifted their eyes from their lap trays to take in a little bit of our surroundings as we drove.
Wikki Stix
While this particular addition to the road trip kit ended up being a dud for my kids, enough people suggested them to me that they must be great for others! Wikki Stix are thin, colorful, sticky strips of wax-coated yarn that kids can shape, mold, and stick together. They can spell out letters and words, create 3D objects and scenes, and otherwise let their imaginations run wild. Plus, the Stix are reusable, providing endless opportunities for fun.
Ours ended up in big globs on our back windows, but they were worth a shot!
Camera
Buying each of our kids a children’s camera was one of the best decisions we made for our road trip. Oh, the sheer volume of blurry photos S delightedly took out her window!
They had fun playing with the cameras in the car, including scrolling back through the pictures they had taken, but these hardy little guys were also awesome for sightseeing days on our trip. What could have been a super boring day for preschoolers – wandering the streets of Old Quebec – was made much more fun when we brought the cameras along!
Other/Alternative Activity Box Contents
Depending on the age and interests of your child(ren), they may also enjoy:
- Magnetic games, specific this one that we have loved.
- Scavenger hunt cards
- Glow sticks for night drives
- Color Wonder Mess Free kits
- Water Wow books
- Busy/Sensory boards
- Bubble/pop fidget toys
- Grab & Go Play Packs (small activity packs found seasonally/occasionally at Target’s Dollar Spot)
- Snacks
I hope that your road trip activity box is as successful as ours was! Did I miss anything that you always make sure to bring along on long car rides? I’d love for you to let me know in the comments so I can make sure it’s included in the next iteration! Until then, happy travels!
Like the post? Pin to save or share!
Read More:
Need some help planning your next family vacation? Full Life, Full Passport offers customized planning services for all kinds of vacations and budgets!
