Long car journey with 3.5yo + 21mo: games, activities and tips please!

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Just did quite a long one and dried up a bit after a few songs and rounds of I-Spy (which DD1 just about gets, but DD2 feels a bit left out of!). More inspiration required ...

We'll be travelling by day - have done the night-time thing and it doesn't really work for us.

plenty of wee snacks to keep them going, picture books, crayons and colouring book, or those mini aqua draw mats.
Or we use a dvd player, but don't put it on until all other activities have been exhausted. ds got an elc mp3 player at christmas, which is also useful for car journeys.

hth

We don't do the night-thing but we do often leave very early in the morning - say 5 a.m.
Roads are virtually empty at this time and children still fairly sleepy for a long time.

We went to Cornwall a few years ago and what has taken us up to 7 hours at 'normal' times of the day took us only 4 hours because there were just no cars around for ages. Left at 5 a.m., got to Penzance for 9 a.m. for breakfast - great! And it wasn't so early that either adults or children felt really tired and grotty for the start of the holiday.

Otherwise, my tips would actually be the to limit the number of drinks/snacks and rests - that just seems to drag out the whole journey even more. We prefer to try and get it over with as quickly as possible, so limit stops to really necessary ones for the loo and a brief stretch of legs.

Our 3 have always loved listening to story tapes, ever since they were toddlers. Either on the car system or on personal hi-fis or MP3 players. We have all the Harry Potter books on CDs, and they have kept us going on many a long journey - they last for hours!

Thanks flier and exbatt. It is Cornwall actually exbatt. We were talking yesterday about maybe trying the early morning thing.

DD2 hasn't really got into story tapes yet ... wonder if DD1's old enough for Harry Potter ...

Have started a 'wanted' thread for song tapes - might see if I can get some new story ones too.

Thanks again

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another thread on this subject here

That's useful iota, thanks

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