You'll find numerous travel activity books available, but why not save money and make your own? Even better, make one specific to your child's interests. I always put together zippable three-ring binders for each of my daughters to take on long road trips. They're always excited to see what surprises I've put in there. The following are some of the resources I've found to make the task quick and easy.
Printable Travel Games and Workbooks
Learn how to assemble a travel binder at My Own Backyard. The author, Susan, provides links to several websites where you can find fun worksheets and printables with which to stock your travel workbook, along with tips for preserving bingo pages for reuse.
Education.com provides fun and educational travel worksheets, including:
- Travel Bingo: Farm; City; Freeway; Coast; Signs; Animals; Airport; Mountains,
- Let's Go Camping,
- Fun Pages for the 50 U.S. states.
- European Country Search, and
- Many more.
The Fun Pages geography series shares flags, capitols, interesting people, places, and animals for each state. Parents, students, and teachers can join free for access to all Education.com printable worksheets.
More Travel Games for the Car
Susan Caplan's "Classic Travel Games for the Car" require no materials to play. The games challenge children ages 8 and up. Some of the names of the games are enough to evoke interest: Ghost, Grandma is Strange, and Grandmother's Trunk.
In Patti Miller's "Travel Games for Homeschoolers," she invites families to go beyond "I Spy" and Charades" and turn a car ride into a fun learning experience with word games, logic games, and imagination games.
If you do want to buy a book, one of my favorite resources is Dianne Flynn Keith's Carschooling. She invites "road scholars" to turn travel time into learning time with a large collection of car-based activities created by homeschooling families. If you don't already have it, you can get the book at twenty percent discount through HomeschoolBuyersCo-op.org. It's free to join and worth it.
As an alternative, an iPod, iPhone, or similar device can be filled with free downloadable videos and children's apps.
Long car rides don't have to be boring. With a little preparation, road trips can be great fun for the whole family. You can stick to the classics or try out some new activities that may become favorite traveling traditions.
Sara McGrath - Sara is a veteran homeschool mom of three, Usborne consultant, and the author of Unschooling: A Lifestyle of Learning.
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