Tips for long car journey with kids?

[Wunjo]

Never done this before - what can I do to make a 6 hour car journey with a 5 and 3 year old bearable? They can't do activity books because I think they'll be sick and I'm honestly stumped! I know if there are any magic tricks Mumsnet can tell me! Thanks in advance

We never drive at night so we manage with the following:

Story tapes
DVD player/downloaded movie on ipad and mounted on the headrest of the front seat with DD using headphones
expecting them to be ok for short period of times on their own

We are NT members and often scheduled breaks along the way for DD to run around. Normally the tea rooms and toilets are nice and if the weather is good we did a picnic lunch as well.

When we stopped for groceries just before arriving at the cottage or whereever we stayed DH stayed in the car with DD. It was faster getting in and out of the store doing it alone. I am not a fan of online delivery but we sometimes did a click and collect and I just grabbed some fresh items on top of it.

My eldest is sick doing anything but looking forward or out of the window it’s a nightmare!
He has fidget toys that he can play with but not look at so much like pop it’s, infinity cubes etc.
They both have their own headphones with MP3 player so no fighting over what’s listened to, as long as it’s auto play and not reading the screen regularly it’s ok.
Other than that we just play games and chat etc.
Aim to stop every couple of hours for a run around somewhere safe.

When they were younger, we did the DVDs on the back of the headrest in front, but DS gets car sick now. We have an audible subscription and download the books on to his tablet before we set off, and he can happily go hours just listening. Might not work for your younger one though.

A trick I used for long plane journeys when they were younger was wrapping up little presents (small stuff like sticker books, sweets, a car etc that didn't cost a lot) and giving them something new every hour to open. Kept the journey exciting (because they knew they'd get another thing to open) and they also played with whatever they'd opened. Plus it gave them new stuff to play with once we got to our destination.

I'm not sure you need to be so rude @Louise0701 !

We do lots of long car journeys. We do a lot of audio books and songs on Spotify. My eldest reads (youngest can’t yet) and he does wordsearch books. After we’ve been on the road for a good few hrs we give them tablets with downloaded stuff on Netflix. We also find the county parks good as free and decent playgrounds etc.