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10 Ideas for Road Trip Fun

Hitting the road this summer for a trip? Have no fear, driving in the car for hours to your destination does not have to be boring! Here are our top 10 fun road trip activities for kids of all ages.

1. Trip Journal

Find a cute notebook and start a road trip journal! Chronicle each interesting stop and site seen along the way, there and back again. Maybe even collect receipts, wrappers, or bits of nature that you can press in your journal as momentos!

2. Family Playlist

Create a playlist with the title of your destination. Ask everyone in the family to contribute some of their favorite songs to listen to on the way. You can even have the rest of the family guess who contributed each song as it comes on.

3. Vacation Activity Book

Pack an activity book and let the writers do the work of creating games and distractions for travel! It can be themed according to the recipient’s interests or a general travel theme.

4. Rest Stop Surprise

Wrap several small toys, fidgets, or snacks in tissue paper. At each rest stop (or whenever the boredom begins to take hold), unwrap a surprise to help keep everyone entertained throughout the next leg of the trip!

5. Family Photo

Start your trip with the promise that each family member gets to pick a spot for a family photo along the way. Maybe it’s in front of a giant dinosaur statue, or maybe it’s in a field of wildflowers that are someone’s favorite color! The rules are that everyone gets one pick, and the rest of the family can’t say no (as long as it’s not a dangerous spot, of course!).

6. Travel Games

Grab an easily packable travel game to take the fun on the road. Any game with small packaging and minimal pieces can be a travel game! Here are a few of our favorites to get you started.

7. Story Time

Download a storytime podcast or an audiobook for easy travel storytime, or create a story of your own along the way! Have one person start the story and then leave it at a cliffhanger for the next person to decide what happens.

8. Follow Along Map

This one takes a bit of pre-planning, but it can really pay off for kids who like to see the big picture. Create a map of your trip for kids to follow along during the ride. Even if it’s just a checklist of the stops that you’ll make along the way, a visual representation of the trip can help kids feel like they know what to expect, and can help stave off the “are we there yet?”s!

9. Magnetic Games on a Cookie Sheet

Grab a cookie sheet for an easy-to-bring-along lap desk, and include a few magnets for travel-friendly fun! Any magnets can become toys on the cookie sheet, or you can find small magnetic games meant for travel as well.

10. Car Games

Check out 6 cool car games to choose from below!

I Spy

Take a look around for something to spy or think of something in your head. Have the rest of the car ask yes or no questions to guess what it is you’re thinking of. You can put a time or question number limit to make it more challenging for the guessers.

Cow Game

Divide the car into teams (left side vs right side) or play as individuals. Count the cows on your side of the road making sure to claim the cows if you see them first. Whoever has the most cows at the end of the trip wins!

Alphabet Game

In this game, the players take turns looking around in the car as well as outside of their windows and try to spot a word that begins with the first letter of the alphabet and so on until the end. Once the first letter (A) has been found, the players can move on to the next. Make a note of the letters you find and tally up the points at the end.

License Plate Game

Start by finding an A in a license plate, and then a B, and then a C, and see if you can spot every letter through to Z! Play as a team or compete for the first person to make it all the way through the alphabet individually.

Celebrity Name Game

Go through the alphabet and name a celebrity whose first name starts with that letter. The next person says a person whose first name starts with the same letter as the last name of the last player's person. This goes on until someone cannot respond with a name! In this case, the player is out.

Name That Tune

You can play this game a couple of ways. In this game, the player that is up first will hum a tune. It can be any song they want. The first person to name that tune gets a point and is up next to hum a tune. You can collaboratively decide how many points are needed to win the game. Another way can be to actually stream a song over the radio and have everyone guess the song this way.

Need more ideas? Check out our other resources for screen free fun!