10 Ways to Entertain Little Kids on Road Trips
August 4, 2016This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #RoadTripOil #CollectiveBias
Summer is in full swing over here, and that means one thing: we’re always on-the-go! Whether we’re visiting a local children’s museum or traveling to another state for a family vacation, we spend a lot of time in the car during the summer. Today I’ll be sharing some tips & tricks to keep little ones entertained during long road trips. Before heading out on any road trips, we always make sure that our car is ready for all that driving. When it comes to oil changes, nothing compares to Pennzoil Platinum®: Full Synthetic Motor Oil with PurePlus™ Technology. In fact, Pennzoil motor oil helps clean out sludge that other oils leave behind. By the way, we get our oil changed at Walmart’s Auto Care Center- it’s convenient, affordable & quick!
Within the next two weeks, we plan on taking another road trip. We’ll be heading to a nearby children’s amusement park, where we can go on the rides, tour the various attractions, visit the hotel pool, and just enjoy a nice break from the everyday routine. To get all of our road trips essentials (snacks, drinks, entertainment, etc.), we always head to Walmart. While we’re shopping for everything we need, we drop off the car at the Auto Care Center at Walmart. By the time we’re done shopping, the car is usually ready for pick-up. Let me share with you what I bought to keep the little one entertained on long car rides.
10 Ways to Entertain Little Kids on Road Trips
10 Ways to Entertain Little Kids on Road Trips
1. Make discovery bottles. It’s super easy to make these discovery bottles for little kids. All you need is an empty water bottle, rice, glitter, pom poms, beads, small figurines, etc.
10 Ways to Entertain Little Kids on Road Trips
Place everything into the bottle.
10 Ways to Entertain Little Kids on Road Trips
Screw the cap onto the bottle and secure with hot glue. Shake well! The kids love to shake this bottle and look for specific pom pom colors or specific figurines.
10 Ways to Entertain Little Kids on Road Trips
2. Wrap small toys. Pick up a bunch of small toys from the store: figurine, squishy ball, musical clapper, etc.
10 Ways to Entertain Little Kids on Road Trips
Wrap the little toys individually. Half of the fun will be unwrapping these little gifts!
10 Ways to Entertain Little Kids on Road Trips
3. Play with pipe cleaners. Pipe cleaners are a fabulous tool to keep the kids entertained on long road trips. I love that pip cleaners don’t make a mess and can be shaped into various animals, flowers, letters, etc.
10 Ways to Entertain Little Kids on Road Trips
4. Make a portable art set. Got an old DVD case? Transform it into a portable art set that’s perfect for making masterpieces on-the-go! Simply slide some white paper into the left side and add some colored pencils to the right side! Happy drawing!
10 Ways to Entertain Little Kids on Road Trips
5. Print a map for the kids. My kids always love to be fully involved in everything we do. So when we’re in the car driving to our destination, I sometimes like to print out a kid-sized map for them to hold in the backseat. I wrap the map in clear contact paper to make it a bit more durable, and I even hand them a toy car for pretend driving play. This activity makes it easy for me to teach them about maps, highways, directions, and so on.
10 Ways to Entertain Little Kids on Road Trips
6. Bring a felt play board. You can buy one of these felt boards from the store or you can make one yourself. Simply wrap some felt around a piece of cardboard. Then cut out shapes of different animals and other scene elements. Check out this one I recently made of an underwater scene!
10 Ways to Entertain Little Kids on Road Trips
7. Play with glow sticks. Especially if you’ll be driving in the early morning or late evening (when it’s dark outside), glow sticks are a fun way to keep kids entertained in the back seat. My kids love to wave these glow sticks and admire the beautiful, bright colors.
10 Ways to Entertain Little Kids on Road Trips
8. Keep track along the way. Got a kid who loves to look out the window? Print out this sheet and let her keep track of what she sees. Did she spot a red car? Add a tally mark to this sheet! She can create a running tally of how many red cars, deer, flowers, etc. she sees along the way!
10 Ways to Entertain Little Kids on Road Trips
9. Play games on a tablet / smartphone. Sometimes electronic entertainment is the way to go! My kids love to play some fun (yet educational) games on my smartphone or tablet. They also enjoy scrolling through the pictures on my device and reliving memories of past birthdays, play dates, trips, etc.
10 Ways to Entertain Little Kids on Road Trips
10. Carry portable snacks. A well-fed child is a content child. Make sure you always have plenty of snacks available for car trips. We usually bring fruits, raisins and crackers.
10 Ways to Entertain Little Kids on Road Trips
Now that the kids are ready for the road trip, it’s time to make sure that the car is all set! Did you know you can get your oil changed at Walmart? I love that I can conveniently get that done while shopping!
Walmart Auto Care Center
By getting my oil changed with Pennzoil at the Walmart Auto Care Center, I can save time & money for all those summer road trips.
Walmart Auto Care Center
Every time I visit the Walmart Auto Care Center, the staff is always friendly and helpful. Check out Walmart’s Auto Care Center to get your car in top shape for road trips.
Walmart Auto Care Center
My local Walmart’s Auto Care Center even has a lovely waiting room with refreshments, comfy couches and a television!
Walmart Auto Care Center
One thing I love to do is peek through the glass and watch the expert technicians work on my car. If you love a great deal, you’ll love this: Pennzoil High mileage is on Rollback ($39.88 on Rollback to $35.88) from June 15 through September 28! So head over to Walmart to take advantage of this fabulous deal while it lasts!
Walmart Auto Care Center
By the way, our vehicle has close to 75K miles on it. Once it reaches the 75K-mile mark, we will switch to Pennzoil® High Mileage Vehicle® motor oil. This oil is effective at cleaning out the sludge that other motor oils leave behind! Pennzoil motor oil also helps to reduce leaks & oil consumption in older engines. Got a new or late model vehicle with more than 75,000 miles on it? Try Pennzoil® High Mileage Vehicle® motor oil to keep your engine running in top shape! Click here to find your nearest Auto Care Center!
To stay up-to-date on the latest offers & promotions from Pennzoil, be sure to visit them on Facebook and YouTube.
Now, learn more about what makes Pennzoil motor oil unique and tell me: Have you ever had your vehicle’s oil changed at Walmart before? How do you keep little kids entertained during long road trips? Are you going away this summer?
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We always bring along stuff for the kids to do on road trips. Where’s Waldo and Mad Libs are among their favorites.
We are headed out for a 9 hour drive in less than a month! I sure will try a few of these to keep the littles busy!!
Great ideas. When my kids were really little, I made my own felt boards for them. As they got a little older, I’d pick up fun things from Cracker Barrel, like road trip Bingo boards or Invisible Ink notebooks.
So many great ideas here! When I had small kids I did the same type things. We did the small board games and thank goodness for a tv in the car too!
These are such great ideas! Thanks for sharing!
These are such great ideas that I am saving for use later when I got visit my little cousins! thank you !
A portable art set is a great idea. My kids used to be so hard to entertain on long road trips. These are good tips!
I find it that it is very important to keep kids busy during the trip! I love to give them books to read and what I do is ask them questions about what they read to keep them engaged.
These sound like excellent ways to keep kid entertained while on a road trip, I am sure they may get a bit stir crazy if not for ideas like this!
I’m all about snacks and activities when we set out on a road trip. The kids love to pack their own little bags of fun. I make sure we have good snacks.
These are wonderful ideas! On long road trips we used to wrap small presents to give to the kids every once in a while.
The felt play board is indeed a great idea. I will have to share these ideas with my sister and nieces who have little ones. Thanks for sharing the ideas.
These are such great ideas! I sure will try a few of these to keep the kids busy!!
Roadtrips really are a great way to break out of the daily routine. And these are excellent tips for entertaining kids on those trips! Thank you so much for sharing! #client
Thanks, David!
These are wonderful ideas! I especially love the felt board. My kids are older now and I bet they would still love the felt board (hee-hee). Maybe a Pokemon felt board? lol
I love that discovery bottle idea, how cute! My favorite ways to keep the kids occupied were “road games” and maps…I’ve always tried to encourage them to be aware of the world outside of the car (although handheld devices have always come in handy, as well).
I love this pipe cleaners idea. My kids have such busy little hands they would love playing with them!
These all look like great ways to entertain little kids on a road trip. I love that art book, most of my nieces and nephews love to draw so this would be perfect for them!
If you’re flying at night, bring along a pair of pajamas for your child so they can be comfortable and feel like it’s really bedtime. Brushing teeth and snuggling with a beloved stuffed animal or blanket can also help make it feel more familiar, and it will increase the likelihood that your little one will sleep for at least a couple of hours during the flight. Now if only
I love the idea of bringing along pajamas! Thanks Asa!