Amusing kids on a very long car journey

[BrieAndChilli]

We are driving to Italy (spread over 3 days) so will be in the car for 6-7 hours per day.
Kids are 12, 11 and 8

Obviously we will allow them to take tablets but need other ideas to keep them amused, happy and comfortable.

I need ideas for little things they can play with, travel games and also great snacks and other tips!!

Can you drive further in 1 day and get there faster?

No we want to stop off in a couple of places where we used to work so not bothered about doing it faster (will be doing it over 2 days on way back though)

My eldest is 8... She likes sticker books (the Top Model ones, not toddler ones) and scratch art books in the car.

Podcasts and audiobooks

No electronic devices or books in our car (youngest gets travel sick). We regularly drive long journeys in the UK and France.

We play stupid word games. "Names that are Verbs" etc. The games drive us slightly mad, so then we drive in silence for an hour or so.

Car DVD players are bloody brilliant. A Doodle Girls colouring book kept my 8yo dd busy for ages on a long flight. We also play games like 20 questions.

It's a bit niche, but my family also play roleplaying games on long drives (I run the game and the dcs have characters).

We drove 6.5 hrs today through France with a 4.5 yr old and an 18 month old.
My older daughter was a dream. The little one was horrendous.
I sang wheels on the bus 67,000 times and finally relented and put paw patrol on the iPad

Top Trumps is a useful game. DD and I were stuck on a very delayed train last year (5 hours rather than 3) and the Adventure Time one kept us occupied for quite a while!

Download every episode of Cabin Pressure - that's 15 hours accounted for. Then spend the rest of the journey playing Yellow Car :)

I’ve just driven over 5 hours today. Our games were, capital city of whichever country, name a country beginning with, who’s this famous person by description ie; blonde, female, sings, from x country, has sung with x singer.
Magazines and books. Snacks and plenty of stop offs.

When my dps drove us to Hungary, I still to this day wonder how we survived that long journey.

Tried and tested sanity-saver for when boredom/squabbling sets in:
[tip courtesy of friend, after 8hr Xmas Eve drive with fractious kids]

Shock them into stunned silence by playing your trump card:
your (pre-rehearsed, word-perfect) rendition of Will Smith's finest.
Complete with over-exaggerated expressions & (if safe!) in-seat dancing.

Even the most jaded, too-cool-for-school 12 yr old will find the prospect of a parent making an eejit of themself to Fresh Prince Of Bel Air a diversion...

Full lyrics here:

I made the dc lap trays out of light weight metal baking trays (the kind for swissrolls with an edge on them) and padded the bottom like a TV tray
They are brilliant. You can get all sorts of magnetic travel games that stick to them. I cut a lego base on half of ds’ one so he can build, and dd often uses hers to draw on.
You can glue magnets onto figurines and anything really.

DD gets car sick when reading or doing any kind of paper activities so we rely on games like “who am I” with yes/no answers, audiobooks, DVDs.

Audiobooks are either listen to by the whole familylike Harry Potter (causing DH to miss exits on the motorway) or DD has them downloaded on her phone with headphones.

Mixed with some radio music and the fact that she has to be bored for at least 30 minutes between things the time goes by ok-ish.

We also schedule a decent lunch break.

Verbal games are great fun at this age because they can do them properly. Not just I spy but complicated stuff. You can Google for ideas or I've got a couple of books I use with my English classes - games for bored adults, and the Oxford book of word games.

Lateral thinking puzzles can be really fun. Look for an app or website or buy a boxed game set. Take it in turns to read one out, everyone tries to work out the answer, the original person who read it looks at the answer and feeds back on the guesses without saying outright what it is.

Audio books on the car stereo. Our story podcasts.

waitbutwhy.com/table/whats-great-two-person-game
I've used some of these in the car (look at the comments)

Audiobooks for the whole car, or individually downloaded onto ipods or phones, depending on the age of the child (library has a zillion that you can check out for free)

Thanks everyone

I’ve ordered a extremely hard riddles for kids book,
Travel battleships game as DS2 played that at his friends and enjoyed it.
Travel guess who

I’m going to get a new rubix cube as our last one for broken by a friend
I’ll go through the boxes of toys and find things we have like little ball maze, top trumps, etc

They can download films and programmes onto thier tablets and all have headphones already.

I’ve also ordered 2 car tidy things that go on the back of the front seats to hold tablets if watching a film, water bottles etc to help keep things more organised and lessen the moaning about can’t reach water bottle/find x etc
DH is also going to get a multi usb charge for the car as we end up with arguments over how has less battery and needs to charge thier device and that’s on a 2.5 hour journey to grandmas in Devon!!

Audiobooks

Can you still get those Eye Spy books? You tick off things you spot as you go. I'll see if I can find a link.

Here you go. There are different categories but this is the car journey version.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/i-SPY-car-journey-Collins-Michelin/dp/0008182701/ref=sr11_1?crid=YTFF96AFWMIF&keywords=eye+spy+books+for+children&qid=1564295413&s=gateway&sprefix=Eye+spy%2Caps%2C258&sr=8-1

@ThisIsNotAIBUPeople I was just about to post the same thing!
Op the eye spy books are great! I like the will smith idea

@mogloveseggs They once came in very useful on a trip to Holland by ferry and campervan with two smallish boys, before technology made life much easier!

audio books save my sanity.

A clipboard with lots of sheets of paper attached so they can play pictionary, hangman or draw and colour.

I already know most of the words to the fresh prince so that won’t take much effort on my part!