top tips for occupying a three year old on a long car journey wanted!

[magaddict]

We are travelling to Cornwall on Sunday and will be taking our three yr old and baby with us - the baby will sleep but I am not sure how ds will cope with journey - he gets a bit travel sick and it is going to take around 4 hours. We are not sure whether to get up and go really really early in the morning in the hope he will fall asleep or to wait until after lunch. Any tips gratefully received on - travel sickness, keeping him occupied without books/comics etc for the sickness reason, and the best time to travel!
Many thanks

We have found that Joyrides work well for the dcs, both of whom get a bit travel-sick. This makes picture books a possibility.

At three, they both liked stickers, which are not too messy (well, my two could generate mess in an empty aircraft hangar but sticker debris can be cleared up fast).

We have a lucky dip bag, which they aren't allowed to see in advance, and which usually contains stickers, little action figures, Duplo figures and a few Duplo bits like Dora's seesaw, a swing, a trike, boxes of raisins, a couple of packs Organix cheese puffs, bottles of water - some new, but most of it already in toy boxes at home. Also mini-books of stickers, crayons and some Crayola or Galt small-format pads.

That goes on the back seat between them and they forage.

Depending on whether he is just 3 or almost 4, you might find I Spy and Spot the Red Car type games a possibility...

Good luck - I have to admit car journeys are a lot easier now that mine are 4 and 8.

If you can afford it, i'd recommend a portable dvd player. Ours was £50 and worth every penny! I drive with my 3 year old from the south coast to scotland and we don't even notice the journey.

Useful threads here and here

have you got a portable dvd player,if not can you borrow one????? i live up north and drove to sussex a couple of months back and invested in a portable dvd player....you can frown if you choose but it was a life saver

We recently took a few long car journeys with our 2 yr old and 3 yr old. We are lucky that they don't suffer from travel sickness but they do however suffer from boredom!!!!

We have a large zip up portable bag (kind of like a box really) and told them they could put whatever toys they wanted to bring with them in it. It included crayons, papaer, colouring books, toy cars, rubber animals etc. We then placed the box in the middle of the back seat (between the car seats) and it worked wondrs. They could just help themselves and were content for 6 hours! We did stop a couple of times as well to stretch our legs and have a bite to eat.

many thanks for your tips - budget doesn't really extend to DVD player at the moment unfortunately so think will go for bag of assorted bits and bobs and hope for the best! I am hoping that he will sleep for at least part of the way, but that might just be wishful thinking as he is very, very excited about the sea side!!! Wish us luck! Thanks again

How about leaving a couple of hours before ds would usually wake up? Hopefully they'll both sleep for a while, then you can stop somewhere for breakfast and a rest, and ds can stretch his legs a bit. Leaves you with just a couple more hours to occupy him after that...

Our annual trip home is a bit of a marathon (10-12 hour drive to get there, followed by a tour of all the relations...), but as long as we're in no hurry and stop every couple of hours then it seems to be relatively stress-free, honest! Amazing how entertaining the hand-dryers in the loos at Welcome Break can be when you're 3 .

Agree portable DVD is a sanity saver! Unfortunately ours won't charge up properly in the car, so we have to hold it back until we ahem, the kids are REALLY fed up eg stuck in traffic.