Are we there yet?
He's touching me.
She's looking out my window!
How much longer?
Can I have a turn on the Nintendo Switch now? He's had it forever!
We have visited the state forests closest to our house, and our day trips are covering more ground lately. Driving a couple of hours for our Adventure Fridays, can be delightful or a terror. In fact, if you have done any traveling with children you know anything further than the grocery store can quickly become a severe trial of your patience, so today I'm sharing five ways to keep your cool when traveling with kids. Maybe some of my tips and tricks will make your next road trip a little easier.

Five Ways to Keep Your Cool When Traveling with Kids
Grab a Bookbag
My first suggestion is to have a small bag for your children in the car. The key to making this work is that it must be a small bag that's light weight. Have them put a few favorite items in it for the drive. I try to remember to have them put this bag together and in the car the night before a trip, just to streamline our morning. One of mine always includes the Nintendo Switch, in fact, he grabs that bag even for short grocery store runs. Another brings her sketch book and something to draw with. Another always brings her ipad to read or listen to music. My littles like their doodle pads, matchbox cars, and stuffed animals. On long family road trips, I even bring a bag with me to keep me occupied while Gary drives.
Another option is to keep a bag in the car that you only pull out for road trips. This is a great option if you want to by pass the wait to have everyone pack up a bag before leaving on a trip. A few suggestions for a family car bag would be sudoku books (we use to have an electronic sudoku game), crossword puzzles, a travel magnetic chess set or other travel versions of games, books with a book light, and don't forget chargers for any electronics.
Play some Car Games
This brings me to my next suggestion, play car games. This is a great way to spend some time, especially early in a trip before everyone is tired of riding and tired of everyone else. I keep a few pencils and car game notepads in the car. We have hangman note pads, US state maps for marking license plates, and interstate bingo. The kids also play punch buggy and we invented our own billboard game awarding points for every Alexander Shunnarah sign we see in the state of Alabama since there are so many. My husband grew up playing a game with his siblings where you "race the other cars." You pick a make and model of car or for the little kids something like red trucks, and you start in 42nd place and move up a place for each car of your choice that you pass. If one passes you, you move down a place. The winner is the one in the highest place when you get to your destination.
The idea is to do something together, something that lets them work on skills while playing a game. They are reading, spelling, thinking, focusing, searching, evaluating, all good problem solving skills in the guise of a game. So it's time well spent as well as time enjoyed. When we get a chance to let them team up and play together it also encourages teamwork and gives them a chance to work with siblings as well.
Always Have Drinks and Snacks
Unfortunately on really long car trips you always get to a point where everyone is bored with what is in their bag and the car games have dissolved into a fight, so what's the solution? SNACKS! Easy to reach, as mess less as possible, snacks. We haven't needed these on any of our Adventure Fridays (though the bag is always raided after a hike), but for long car trips they are a must. Of course, I can't let them have a complete free for all in the back of the van or we would be out of snacks and drinks by hour 3 on the road, and we want them to last a whole 12 hours on the way to Alabama to see family for example.
You know your family and the snacks that they like, so I'm not going to throw out suggestions other than to say we are a firm believer in all the road trip food groups - healthy snacks for early on, followed by salty snacks and sweet snacks when you just need to stay alert, all washed down with plenty of water and caffeine.

Don't Underestimate the Power of a Video Player
I can remember when Britt was small, Gary and I felt like we had survived long trips without a video player, why did the kids need one. But after having one, we never wanted to go back. The truth is as much as they loved watching DVDs, we loved the silence it bought us. When you couple a video player with headphones, you get utter silence from the back seat. That meant Gary and I could talk, listen to our own music, or just enjoy the sound of silence.
Any kind of electronic can fit in this category. While we keep a container of kids DVDs in the car to this day for the younger kids to watch, the older kids prefer their ipads or the modern version of the game boy - the Nintendo Switch. I have even been known, in desperate situations, to turn on my phone's hot spot to stream a favorite show on the ipad for screaming toddlers. The only draw back to the electronics on the road is when they decide to share something with each other and they are all yelling to each other while still wearing headphones.
Audiobooks
However our number one suggestion for peaceful car trips are audiobooks. This has been our go to for YEARS now. Whether it's a one hour drive home from Church or a 12 hour drive to Alabama, we are huge fans of Hoopla. We use our library cards to check out family audiobooks (a series is even better) and we listen to them as a family any time we are in the car. Audible, Cloud, Libby, and even picking up a set of CDs from the local library are all other viable options, rather than buying every book on cd out there.
We look for family audiobooks, that everyone can enjoy. In the last year, we have listened to the fifteen books in the Wings of Fire series, the four books in the Green Ember series, and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. In the past we've listened to the Harry Potter series and several of Rick Riordan's series. Next, we plan to start the Little House books. The key is to try to find something that everyone can enjoy, and to rotate who I particularly have in mind for a book. The Green Ember Series was especially for Britt, so this time I looked for something that Ruth would particularly enjoy. I've been putting off reading the Little House books until we got to that point in our history studies, but we are there now. Since Ruth has enjoyed the American girl books in the past, I think she'll especially enjoy these books.
By only listening to these books on the road and keeping them separate from our read-alouds that we do for school, they are something that everyone looks forward to enjoying together. Oh occasionally, I might get a Brave Writer literature guide and discuss things from a book that we listen too, but for the most part it is just fun for us. It helps us adults stay sane by keeping the noise volume down in the car, and gives us something fun to talk about as a family when we make stops or pause the book. The kids have been known to discuss for an entire hike what they think is going to happen next with the story line of the book we've been listening too.

Wrapping it All Up
Are there still squabbles in the car? Yes. Do I still lose my cool, and yell for everyone to be silent for the rest of the ride? Sometimes. Despite still having our hiccups, these five tricks have made our car rides far smoother than they were before. When you have six kids in the car a two hour trip can feel twice as long, and interesting conversations and fall apart into fierce arguments, so these five tips have helped us to keep our cool when traveling with kids.
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