Road Trip Busy Bags for Kids

Every summer my family and I take a road trip, usually to visit our extended families.  This year our trips are very carefully planned to limit our risk due to the pandemic. We won't be stopping at any hotels, we have masks and tons of hand sanitizer and are limiting close contact (ex. hugging) with those we visit.  We're also not visiting any restaurants on our trip. We are still planning on visiting our immediate family but all other vacations have been postponed.  That being said, we have a family visit coming up! Over the years and as the boys have grown we started putting together "busy bags" for the car to keep them entertained. We also found the items to be helpful once we got to our destination or stopped at a restaurant/hotel too.  My boys are currently 3 and 6 but even though they are three years apart we have two of almost everything since they will fight over things if one has something the other doesn't.  Here's what we put in our "busy bags". 

First, we have clipboards.  These were bought from Walmart and I love that they open up.  We keep their coloring books inside the clipboards. 

That brings me to the next item...coloring books (my oldest is starting to get into activity books too)!  These were bought at Walmart or Dollar Tree. 

They of course need crayons to go with the coloring books.  Right now we have just regular crayons in their pencil pouches but I really like the twistable crayons. 

We are fortunate that our current minivan has a rear DVD system so my boys don't use the iPad much in the car, they watch a few movies on the DVD player. (We also learned the hard way that my oldest gets car sick from playing the iPad while looking down so another reason we don't get these out on the trip) But, they do play with them when we get to our destination a bit. The foldable headphones are great, I ordered them from Amazon.

Next are "hashtag blocks", I don't think that's their real name though.  My kids at school gave them that name so that's what we call them but these are the Plus-Plus brand.  One of the Plus-Plus tubes fit perfectly in these $1 crayon boxes from Walmart and the boxes help from them going all over. 

My boys love to draw and write silly messages so they both pack their mini-Magna Doodles.  

I have them choose 2-3 books to bring and these are what they chose.  My 6-year-old picked Where's Waldo and the Captain Underpants Guidebook. 

We are working on letters with my 3-year-old so he chose a letter book and a number book. 

We also bring some card games.  My youngest can somewhat play Uno with a partner so we definitely pack that for the trip and for the destination.  This year we packed some ABC flashcards too since we're working on those letters. 

All their things get packed into their backpacks.  I bought these backpacks from Pottery Barn Kids on sale after the back to school rush.  Unfortunately, our school now requires clear or mesh backpacks so they are just road trip "busy bags" now. 

That's it!  I hope that has given you some new ideas if you are road tripping with any kids in the future!