...inexpensive travel games and tips
Oh, just the thought of a road trip gets my heart pumping and my creativity in overdrive. Whether it is a long trip across the nation or a short trip close to home, you can make a car trip fun and educational. Each of the ideas listed are adaptable for children and adults. They can be personalized for your family or your group of girlfriends. Leave the DVD player out of the car, grab a favorite snack and some tunes -- let the adventure begin!
- Save your Altoids tins or any little metal box to create a favorite game of Tic-Tac-Toe. Cover the box with scraps of patterned paper, or a photo mat pad is a perfect size for this project. Add magnetic pieces behind the buttons, and you are ready to play. This little game is perfect for tossing into your purse for long waits at restaurants with restless kids.
- Make table tops for traveling from cookie sheets. They are found in most dollar or discount stores. You can cover them with paper, paint them, or personalize them any way you choose. The cool thing is that they are magnetic. Attach refrigerator magnetic clips to the cookie sheet to keep your art work, drawing, or crossword puzzle in place. Add a set of magnetic refrigerator phrases for silly sentences, or create your own hangman game with magazine people and letter stickers on magnetic sheets.
- A family favorite car game is the alphabet sign game. You must find road signs or signs on vehicles for each letter of the alphabet. You need to find them in alphabetical order. For example, “A” Alabama, “B” Bank, “C” Coyote Cave…and so on. Sometimes you get stuck on a letter. Hang in there, you will find them all.
- Another game our family loves is finding all 50 states’ license plates. My little boy encourages, more like pleads, for us to pull into truck stops so he can find the license plates of states he is missing. You can type a list of all fifty states and cross them off as you find them or tally mark each state to see which you find the most frequently. For younger children, it is important to learn where the state is located on a map in relationship to other states. Color in a blank map as you see that state’s license plate on a vehicle. You may even want to create little license plates on paper and adhere them to magnetic sheets. They can be placed on your cookie sheet as you find them.
- A road trip journal is a must while traveling -- so simple to make and so inexpensive. I found my journal in the dollar bin at a craft store. I like the lined pages in it. Cover the journal with scrap paper or old road map paper. Personalize it for the journey you will be going on. Divide the journal in sections…photos, memorabilia, thoughts, funny stories, something new you learned, places you saw. Think about your journal as a mini scrapbook with dinner receipts, favorite snack wrappers, postcards, and photos placed in it. For younger children, have activities already in it -- like color sheets of places you will visit and questions to be answered about what you saw and what your favorite part was. Add silly sections in the journal -- for example, adhere your snack wrapper and smear your snack here, rub your journal on the ground in three different spots and label where you rubbed it, get your tour guide’s autograph and birthday. You can’t imagine how much fun this is for your family…even Dad. Try doing it with your group of girlfriends. It will leave you in stitches. Come up with the journaling activities in the car on your way to your destination. Beware it might get a little wild. I recommend keeping the journals in zip-lock baggies and having a new box of colored pencils in each one along with glue stick, small scissors, and an eraser. Such a simple, fun activity for all.
- Here is a tip for Moms who get grossed out by crayons in restaurants. Make your own car/purse crayon caddy with a gum container or a Band-Aid box. I love the metal box because the crayons don’t get broken as easily. The size is perfect for placing in your purse. And you can go worry free that the crayons are full of your little ones’ germs and not every child that used them in the restaurant. This little box of crayons is a travel must for me. Warning: Don’t leave it in a hot car.
Pack some fun into those long car trips with a few supplies and a passport of new ideas. Bon voyage, crafters and enjoy the creative journey.
~Kara (Studio Pink)