Give me your ingenius ideas for what to put in an activity bag for the kids for a looooong drive.

[nevergoogle]

Next week we're off for a UK holiday visiting family and will need serious in car entertainment.

We don't have DVD players, ipads, and the car just has a radio which won't have reception for parts of the journey so forget all the electronic ideas etc

In my case, we've three boys age 9, 7 and a 3 month old baby. But as this thread might be useful for others, don't restrict ideas to just suiting them.

I plan to present them with these packs of goodies on the first morning of the holiday. So far, i have beano/dandy comic each, a puzzle book, a clipboard, paper and pens etc, loom bands, a mini dry wipe board thing, and tomorrow i'll take them to choose a book.

I need your most creative and clever ideas for small things that will entertain them in between leg stretch breaks.

Thanks in advance.

Some snacks! Also maybe don't give all play things at once but wait till they get really bored and whip out another thing?
I have just got a mini farm from the garden centre shop. It is tiny with animals etc. Something like that for imaginary play might be good?

Mine are 2 and 5 and I have just packed their travel games.
The older one loves a map, so I've printed out a couple from google maps with our route to France on it so he can follow our progress.
I searched for travel games on Pinterest and found a load of printouts of things to spot - some really simple ones for the 2 year old and some more tricky ones for the 5 yr old. I also found a couple of plastic (probably came with a magazine once) binoculars to play spotting with.
I found a couple of I spy books at a charity shop, which mine might be a bit young for, but will be great in future years.
I have squished some plasticine into a balloon (3 times) to make a sort of stress ball type thing.
Also, little notebook and stickers - for the older one I've put a set of stickers into the book already and he has to play match up.
I have reflective strips and glostick bracelets for if they are still awake when it is dark.
And I have a lot of snacks and bottles of drink.

ooh, good ideas. i love the glowsticks idea.

We used to count caravans and shoot them with empty smarties tubes

The ministers cat is an excellent game which keeps going for ages. Choose a letter (eg S) and in turns say 'the ministers cat is a S.... Cat '

Eg silly/soft/supercilious/strange/soggy/scientific.....

No repetition allowed. I once played it for about 3 hours straight on a coach trip - lots of laughs

But do check safety of glo sticks. I read on MN so it must be true that they can break easily and burn you

At that age we used to travel overnight/late at night. Do baths etc before leaving and travel in PJs. They didn't always sleep all the way but would sleep enough to make the journey seem much shorter for all concerned.

Make sure you remember contraception... you know what happened last holiday!

but seriously... sticker books (usborne etc) are v good.
They also dry-wipe cards in packs with a dry-wipe pen of doodle/puzzle type activities, which are huge fun (though make sure they don't decide to doodle on the baby )
I always buy them a new magazine each, which keeps them quiet for a bit. On good days, they swap with one another, too! My similar aged children like the Star Wars magazine, the playmobil one, moshi monsters (there's a moshi karts one out atm, which is a kind of special I think, and more aimed at boys)
Do you have an ipod at all which you could put an audio book on for them? The roald dahl ones are very good.
Have you seen Rory's Story Cubes? They might be good, if you can trust them not to chuck them all over the car (they come in a Max size too for VI children, or for baby/toddler safety.

Hahahaha, yes, that's a fair point. Little Withnail is enough of a contraception for now I hope!

We made it to scotland after a 12 hour drive stuck in traffic and heat. Awful traffic from birmingham to lancaster on Friday. Very Grim. The kids were all brilliant and entertained by their loot. DH and I both got new loom band creations to wear. The car bingo was a hit. As was the national trust leaf hunt i'd printed off for when we get to our final destination, they started using it in a service station!

Now...does Withnail need a play buddy? There's no seats left in the car so I think not.

Are you on Facebook or similar? Think I'd ask if any friends have DVD players you could borrow (if you were near me you could definitely have ours...)

Invest in the dvd players if you can afford it. They are a lifesaver, also get them headphones to listen to the film, as you don't have it blaring in your ear then. We brought ours about 8 years ago and use them on every UK holiday, well worth investing in.

There are some great 'I spy' books about, like this. I got one for DS for a trip to the coast, and he was engrossed for about 2 hours. I picked one up from Waterstones for a couple of £s, money very well worth spent!

Could you wrap the presents up so they have one to unwrap every 10 miles, like a lucky dip? They could also do forfeits pulled from a bag every 20 miles?

we had audio cds on a long trip last year and they just listened mesmerised for hours while fiddling with toys etc. It was better even than dvd players.

If you have an mp3 player, you can stick it next to the radio, set on a certain frequency and then turn the radio on to that frequency, and it broadcasts.
Or pick up an old portable cd player with double earphones.

Books on CD are a must with my 8 and 6 year old. My local library (Herts) lets you have them for 3 weeks at a time and are completely free. You can also reserve particular titles - for boys of that age try the SWITCH series by Ali Sparkes, the Indoor Pirates book read by Robert Glenister, anything by Jeremy Strong. Better than books, DVDs etc because they look out the window whilst engrossed in listening to the story. Off to Wales tomorrow, with 4 stories (about 10 hours of listening joy!)

Books on CD are a must with my 8 and 6 year old. My local library (Herts) lets you have them for 3 weeks at a time and are completely free. You can also reserve particular titles - for boys of that age try the SWITCH series by Ali Sparkes, the Indoor Pirates book read by Robert Glenister, anything by Jeremy Strong. Better than books, DVDs etc because they look out the window whilst engrossed in listening to the story. Off to Wales tomorrow, with 4 stories (about 10 hours of listening joy!)