Besides reading aloud good literature or listening to entertaining audio story recordings while on the road, here are some additional car-schooling ideas:
- Make a travel journal/scrapbook. Start it at home - with a map of where you're going and maybe some fun stickers glued onto the cover of a spiral notebook or sketchpad - then add to it during the trip as you buy postcards and they dictate or write about what they see each day. Leave empty spaces for photos so the kids can finish it when you're back home and have your pictures developed.
- Make road trip activity bags for each child. I love this idea of themed (like "ocean" and "zoo") activity bags, here from The Peaceful Mom. Include car friendly activities such as crossword puzzles, dot-to-dot books, word searches, and mad libs, to name a few.
- Teach your kids map skills. Bring along a map or atlas just for your kids. You can purchase maps that are laminated or you can print one from the Internet. Highlight your route, marking stops and sights, then put the map in a sheet protector in their travel journal/scrapbook.
- Create a Road Trip Music Playlist. Our kids loved helping us download favorite tunes to make fun playlists for our trips. We included a large variety of music that the whole family could enjoy - including jazz and classical music (Carnival of the Animals was very popular, as was Route 66!)
- Bring healthy snacks to keep kids happy. Water bottles, cheese sticks, granola bars, fruit, nuts, dried fruit...
Do you have any summer road trip tips (or tricks) to share?
I love this! We road tripped recently and I made a scavenger hunt for my newly reading 5 year old with pictures to aid, things to check off like "a snow capped mountain", "a sign with a 'z' in it", "a pink car", and "a car being pulled by a truck." It was a slow process going through the list because he got overwhelmed looking for more than a couple of things at a time, but it definitely kept him challenged on the road.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great idea - I love that! :)
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