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Thursday, May 17, 2012

Car trip treasure box

Our long-anticipated trip to Disneyland is coming right up--we leave in 10 days! And that means it's time to get down to planning and packing business for this momma.
We've done the driving long distances with kids thing multiple times, but honestly, it hasn't gotten any easier. People always ask if we have a DVD player in the van. The answer is yes. We do. With Monsters Inc stuck in it. And no sound.
Anyway, to combat the worst of the "Are we there yet?"s, I spent the last week putting together a ton of activities for my kids in the car. Look for my full list of 100 activities to keep kids occupied in the car in the next week or so!
First up, a hanging book rack between Tempe and Helena's car seats. It has three large pockets, one divided in half for smaller books, and is within easy reach of both girls. For our long drive, I'm going to stock it with I-Spy, Where's Waldo, and Graeme Base mystery books, all of which keep my girls (Tempe, especially) occupied for--well, not hours, but a long time!
Books are great, but they won't keep even the most avid reader occupied for 10+ hours. Enter the car trip treasure box.
Why did I put all of our activities in a treasure box? Because they are more precious than gold when traveling with three preschoolers.
Ours has an art kit (pipe cleaners, crayons, beads and elastic, and washable markers for coloring on the windows), a viewfinder, a set of plastic Bingo boards, the girls' collection of those little Disney Princesses and rubber dresses, bubble wrap (a lot of bubble wrap), bubbles, and a magnetic cookie sheet with alphabet magnets and a magnetic paper doll set.
I bought clipboards for the girls to color on and we have a full pack of printer paper, so we should be good!
We're also bringing a few books on CD (Peter Pan and Ramona), a special mix of all the girls' favorite songs (it includes Johnny Cash, Elvis, MGMT, and Adele), and their kid camera, which has a few simple video games on it. 
Now I am headed to the grocery store to stock up on car-friendly snacks!





1 comment:

Rachel said...

Looks like fun! I love this idea. Anything to make car rides fun and different is fabulous. We have a DVD player, but it doesn't keep the son interested very long- he's more into the interactive games and reading- so this would be perfect for him!