How to Take Small children on a Road Trip
How to take survive Small children on a long road trip
Last week we embarked on a trip fro Western New York to Gatlinburg Tennessee. For those of you who don’t know that is about an 11 hour drive both ways. Taking a four year old in a car for those amount of hours could get stir crazy and just about throw you over board. Unless of course you follow some small life saving tips:
Step one: Choose hours that you child can sleep whilst you drive. We left at 1a m and he slept until about 7am the first day. Now if you don’t like those hour move on to step two. Pack a Snack bag!! I don’t know about you but I get cranky when I’m hungry. So avoid unnecessary whining and spending with a simple reusable bag and load it full of snacks.
Step two: Bring along a activity pack. I was sent these activity packs from the Sample Swap Shop ladies. You can check them out here. I used a pencil organizer and put note pads, crayons and colored pencils in it. I also included coloring books and educational ones he could color in and explore through.
I also invested in a dry erase board from Office Max. You can see how I scored this inexpensive dealhere. This is amazing and has no real clean up because they are washable. Clean up and easy to access is very helpful when you are driving and they are needing entertainment.
Step three: This about takes the cake as far as important tips for going on long drives with your small children. Every few hours (maybe whilst you are refueling) let them out! Yes, find a grassy patch and let them run, explore. This five minute stop will have them refreshed, exhausted if you encourage running around. You stretch your legs and they need to stretch theirs. Plus it really help change their scenery and gives them an outlet for energy because as we all know hey have TONS of energy!!
Last thing I want to mention is not a tip or trick. After your long trip you will be rewarded with, one of a kind, works of art. I will say if you are one of the Swap ladies for instance you maybe getting some cute works of art in the mail from a certain cutie!! Just as a thank you, for helping us build the ultimate activity bag that kept him entertained and us able to focus on driving
