Our family just went on a such a beautiful fall road trip. Living in Central Florida, we don't see much differences in the various seasons, so we love driving up north a bit for cooler weather, apple orchards and family farm fun!
Check out our YouTube video of our trip for some ideas you can try out with your own family!
On our road trips, we travel with two elementary age children and my toddler age daughter. In this blog I'll share some ideas on how we keep them happy and busy during long stretches of driving!
Toddler Tips
- We are very fortunate to have four adults in the van, so there's always someone to keep our toddler entertained. Her car seat sits between two adults.
- She loves sticker books (and so do I)! I usually hand her the stickers, but sometimes she tries to pull them off the page. I find really cheap sticker activity books to use. This activity lasts about 10 minutes at a time.
- On this trip, I also brought about five coloring pencils. They won't melt like crayons and won't make marks all over the place like markers. I only bring a few so I can keep track of them. At this point, my toddler isn't purposefully picking various colors, so a few are just fine. She enjoys it when I color with her.
- My sister bought all three girls some No Mess coloring sets by Crayola. These are markers, but only make color on the actual "magic" pages!
- I brought a few toys that are all inclusive and one piece. The Dimpl Dot by Fat Brain was a huge hit this trip. The worm on a string in the apple toy kept my toddler busy for bits at a time too. Both toys help with fine motor skills and I have done other videos/posts about them both.
- We are also very fortunate to have a little TV in the van, that we use for the days we are driving 12+ hours. We pretty much only watched Bluey on this trip. Be sure to choose a calm show that is slow paced and doesn't have a lot of loud music and fast transitions. We didn't use an iPad on this trip, but the last trip we did, and we kept it at least 12 inches from her eyes.
- Any time we stopped for gas or food, we all walked around and made sure our toddler did too.
- We keep her water bottle filled, toddler snacks ready in the diaper bag patience in our pockets!
What other ideas help for traveling with toddlers? Comment on my posts with some more ideas! I would love to try them out.
