Preparing to Travel

Can children still travel long distances without electronics?

After traveling 14 hours to Florida for our last vacation in one day and about 24 hours back with the “Exodus out of Florida” over two days, I can now say… “most of the time”.

“Are we there yet?” “How much longer?” “I’m bored!” These are common phrases heard by many parents while traveling long distances with children. During our last family vacation, we planned in advance to try to tame these questions.

We began by giving each row a “box” to hold their car items and a garbage bag. In the boxes, they were each provided two waters and a days’ worth of car snacks/meals for them to eat as they wished. We included things such as: protein bars and pre-made drinks, fruit snacks, goldfish, granola bars, bags of nuts, an apple and a sandwich. This saved us from the “I’m hungry” whining throughout the day. They had the freedom to eat as they wished along the way. (We did stop for one meal over about 14 hours.) I tried to tailor some of their choices to their tastes while encouraging them to be healthy with as little sugar as possible. (Hyper kids in the car for a long time doesn’t help anyone:).

For our vacation, I created a three ring binder for each child. In each binder were the following pages (more often than not in plastic sleeves).

1. A pencil bag with pencils, pens, dry erase pens and erasers.

2. A printed 8 x 11 map of each State that we were driving though (in order)

3. Travel games printed out from the internet such as: Car Bingo, Scavenger Hunts, Tic Tac Toe boards, the “Square/Dot” game, paper Battleship, Sign Bingo, word finds, Suduko, coloring pages, the words to crazy sing-a-long songs and blank paper. (I think you get the idea).

4. The plastic covers and dry erase markers allowed them to play the games multiple times.

5. I also added a few lined pages in sleeves – one per day for them to use to journal each day while we were away. (I told them that in 20 years, I would pull out all of the journals and they could read together their different views of the experiences long ago.

My “box” had some special items: a traveling “Bingo” game and the calling cards, mad libs, a trivia game and yes… some PRIZES! (Sometimes these were things like fidget spinners and die cast cars, miniature dolls and yes, I threw in a few pieces of “sugar love” such as Dumdums and smarties. (I tried not to include sticky things).

On my phone, I downloaded the inspirational goal of listening to a book on Audible with the reward of a Little Debbie Cake if they listened to all three hours, but I still have the Little Debbies for our next trip. (Apparently, it wasn’t all that exciting of a book:). I also included music that I knew everyone would enjoy. For a few laughs, we listened to Tim Hawkins comedy.

A bit of preparation and probably less than $50 and we made it with seven kids for about 38 hours of driving with only about four desperate hours of portable dvd movies included. A little

bit of preparation provided us with longest but the most peaceful trip EVER!

I do want to give a call out to all of those who exited Florida before Irma! Truly, those families from Florida and South Carolina were inspirational. The encouragement that we witnessed as people supported and comforted each other when they were fearing losing their homes and lives and the concern and care that came from North Carolina and Virginia as they set up staging areas at the rest stops for those finding that all the hotels were booked.. WOW.. it makes one proud to be an American!

In case you don’t know me, my name is Mrs. G.. I founded Building Brilliant Minds Online in 2009. I have authored several courses in Architecture, Biblical Fine Arts, Photography and Dance. www.buildingbrilliantmindsonline.com. My beginning courses may also be accessed for FREE with a www.schoolhouseteachers.com membership.