Road trip games for families: Your ultimate activity guide for kids of all ages

I get car sick real quick when I’m sitting in the back of the car with the kids.

So I had to come up with solutions for the kids to stay happy on the backseat by themselves at a pretty early age. Or at least with ideas to keep to entertain them from my front seat.

Meanwhile we had plenty of chances to testdrive those ideas and my kids are truly looking forward to long car drives. Completely without watching movies or playing on the tablet.

So, how do you manage to do that?

I’ll first give you some essential hacks followed by a large array of activity ideas for the different age groups from baby and toddler to school-kids.

1. Road trip hacks for long car rides with kids

1.1. Make it a special day

So you found a great holiday home and are looking forward to unplug for a while. You can use exactly that anticipation for the drive – just with a little tweak:

Sell the drive to your kids as a „Fun Day“ on which they are allowed to do some extraordinary things,  have a lot of fun with mom and dad and eat special things that they usually don’t get.

Announce for example, that they will get a suprise bag that they can look forward to (more on that in a bit). And in the end, they’ll be at grandma’s or at a vacation on the beach. But that’s just the bonus for them. The really cool thing was the drive.

It sounds trivial. But especially in the beginning of the drive it makes an enormous difference.

My hack for a relaxed day on the beach: If you have a beach tent like this one, finally nothing is going to fly away anymore and you got  shade for the whole family.

The next hack is also super simple but works like a charm.

1.2. How to prepare your kids for a boring long car ride?

e

Mum, are we there yet?

Imagine you are at your doctor’s office. Sitting in the waiting area with your eyes frequently checking who’s walking by in the anxious hope that your name will finally be called.

It feels like forever, right? Did you ever count how many people were there before you? Did that help?

That’s how it feels for your kids when they just can’t grasp know how long the drive is still going to take.

So what can you do about that?

Before the trip, speak to them about what to expect (and what you expect from them).

And don’t be shy to exaggerate. Because everything feels longer for kids:

„We’ll be driving in the car for a reeeeeeeally long time. We’ll have to stay in our seats all the time, but you can do… for as long as you like. And then we’ll take a long break to play. After that we’ll again be driving for a loooooooong time. But we’ll take all kinds of thing for you to play. So if you get bored you just tell me and we’ll think of a game. How does that sound?“

Probably your kids will have some ideas of their own, what they want to do in the car. Note them down, use them.

If they know how the day is going to go, they have a better idea of where in the day they are. And you have an easier time explaining.

1.3. How do your kids not drop stuff in the car all the time?

Mom, my book fell down! Moooom, I can’t reach it! Moooooooooom!

Fishing things from the floor for your kids is not only annoying. If you are driving alone it’s also outright dangerous.

THE best solution for this problem is a car travel tray. It stays lying on your kid’s lap while being fixed around the child seat with a strap, so that it cannot move around.

All sides have a little „bump“ so that nothing falls down. Even small cars, pens and other things that love to roll off will be stopped. They can store their pens and other little treasure in the many side pockets.

You can totally create a DIY-tray, for example by using a small (and light) baking tray and some fabric. I’m not really good at such DIY-stuff, so we just bought them. And we are super happy with them.

Extra-Hack: Take a tray that your kids can directly draw on and erase it again (just with a paper tissue). Like this it’s a special kind of toy, which is only used on long drives and therefore especially interesting.

A word of warning about backseat organizers that are often recommended:

Often backseat organizers are recommened for long drives with children. When really they are only semi-helpful.

Don’t get me wrong, they are awesome to store toys and other stuff. The problem is, that small kids cannot reach them by themselves during the drive. Which they are not too amused about.

Only bigger kids, who are buckled up with the actual seat belt of the car can reach it. So backseat organizer are great for kids from about 5 years, but not for younger ones.

So what do you put in that surprise bag you promised the kids?

1.4. Pack activities in a surprise bag

The surprise car bag (for each kid) can contain small toys, snacks or vouchers (which can be redeemed immediately – e.g. du decide the next song, you may sit in the front after the next break…).

The special clou is that each item is singally wrapped. So that there’s always something new and exciting to discover.

For small kids, the actual unwrapping is a highlight by itself. For older kids you can put numbers on the presents and let them quess what’s inside or put small quiz questions on it that they need to solve before opening it.

In order to not create an enormous pile of trash on the back seat with this, you can use reusable jute sacks or simply a couple of socks with a ribbon. Also bags that you are going to need on the trip anyway are a good option.

You have several options how to pack the bags and what to put inside. Here are some ideas:

You could prepare one big bag with many small surprises. However, for my kids the result was that they wanted to open all presents right away and didn’t actually stay busy with the single items for as long as I had hoped. The older your kids, the better this is going to work. Your best bet is to make a deal with them. Like you can open one present every 30 minutes.

This is why our suprise bag is always just a small snack bag, which they can keep and eat at once if they really want to. My kids are so looking forward to this every time. On top of the snack bag, I have a bunch of small activity presents in my own bag and I hand them over singally as the moods get low.

Now you are probably wondering which snacks you can put in the snack bag

1.5. What are the best kids travel snacks for long car rides?

Mooom, I’m hungry!

Snacks are wonderful – not only to satisfy your kids’s appetite but they also make for great entertainment for kids in the car.

To keep your kids busy as long as possible, choose snacks that

Also make sure that there are some special things included, that your kids don’t eat so often (for us it’s gummy bears).

Some other ideas are: Small pretzels, fruit bars, musli snacks, tiny saussages or babybel cheese (watch the temperature), raisins, crunchy dried fruit snacks.

Next to this snack bag I always have some snack cups with fruites and veggies (mini-carrots, mini-cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, blueberries, grapes, apples, etc.) with me. In the car we like to use these snack cup because food cannot fall out of them.

To avoid your kid’s water bottle from taking a dive to the floor frequently, we use this cup catcher. Your child can just pull the strap and eventually the bottle will show up in her hand.

1.6. Should you pre-plan your breaks on long car rides with kids?

Does this sound familiar?

Everyone is hungry. Everyone needs to pee. But there’s no place to stop anywhere near.

If you are travelling with kids – and hungry dads – the moods can turn very quickly.

Before you leave, take a quick look at possible stops for breaks. That’s also possible if you don’t know the area so well:

Extra-Hack: Put some chalk in your bag. With that you can quickly draw a few hopscotch squares or draw some circles to come up with your own version of island hopping. If your kids are anything like mine, they’ll quickly come up with their own ideas too

1.7. What’s the best time to start a road trip with children?

It’s often recommended to start driving shortly before nap time, because many (younger) kids sleep through the drive then.

If your kids are very small (like baby small) and like to sleep in the car, by all means go for it. It works brilliantly.

Since my kids got older, we have tried all sorts of variants:

What can you do then?

We usually start driving, so that we take a lunch break after about 2 hours. Until then the kids are well rested and in a good mood and after the break they spent all that pent up energy and are calm again.

Your kids are different than mine, so in the end you can just try different things and stick to the one that works best.

1.8. Should you change the seating positions in the car?

Well, it depends on your kids. I do this extremely rarely.

Simply because it’s always difficult for my kids to stop playing or watching again.

If you know that your kids accept a time limit without compaining, then go for it.

Extra-Hack: If you decide to give your kids a table or phone, speak about the time to switch off beforehand. That time should be an event rather than a time (say „until the next break“ rather than „for 20 minutes“), so that your kids can process that better.

Since screens don’t really work well with my kids, I prefer to come up with some alternative activities.

Which ones? I’ll tell you right now.

You can directly jump to your kids’s age here or keep scrolling:

2. Long car rides with a BABY: What can you take?

Small babies and infants don’t need a lot of entertainment yet. They are happy with the simplest things. Still, you should have a few options at hand:

3. How to keep TODDLERS busy on a long car ride (1.5-3 years)?

While small babies still sleep a lot in the car and don’t need that much entertainment, toddlers are a different story.

If your kid is 1.5 years or older, I bet she challenges you quite a bit. That being said, some of the ideas for babies above still work for toddlers.

But here are a few concrete ideas for activities on long car rides with toddlers:

4. What are activities for KINDERGARTEN KIDS on long car rides (3-6 years)?

4.1 My joker to keep kids busy in the car: Headphones

4.3. Road trip activities your kids can do by themselves in the car (3-6 years)

4.4 Free games for children and parents on a long car ride (3-6 years)

You will reach a point, when your kids won’t want to play on their own anymore. Then it’s time for car games.

You can play these games from the front seat and without a lot of concentration on your part. That’s especially important if you’re traveling alone with a child.

Here are our favorites for kindergarteners:

5. What are activities for SCHOOL KIDS on a road trip (6 years and older)?

When your kids can read and „play“ with letters, a whole new world of activity options opens up. This also makes it easier for them to play by themselves and for you to focus on the road.

However, many of the activities for kindergarten kids still apply to elementary school age. As I said before, a table or car travel tray is often useful for this.

Here are a few ideas for schoolkids.

5.1. Activities that keep schoolkids busy in the car on their own

At some point, your kids are bound to get tired of playing alone. Then your travel games and guessing games come into play.

5.2. Two-player games for schoolkids on a road trip

These games work well if you have several schoolkids in the car or if you can play as a passenger.

5.3. Free car games for long car rides with children over 6 years old

You can play these games with your kid even if you are driving. You only need your head.

6. Things to AVOID on long car rides with kids

7. SUMING UP: Activities for kids on long car rides

Please believe me when I tell you: it’s worth investing a little time to prepare and then have a relaxing drive with the kids. I hope with these tips, your kids will never complain about dying of boredom on a car ride with you.

Now I’m curious to hear from you. What game will you try on the next car ride? Do you think your kids will nag less? Do you have another favorite game that is a big hit with your family? Comment below.

All the best,

Eva