We’re taking a road trip, and we’ll all be in the van from 5:00 a.m. until about 7:00 p.m. with four kids and no portable TV/VCR! This is our second trip without the help of the TV. With the kids ranging in age between 4 and 10, I’ve come up with ideas for keeping them busy:

My big idea for this trip is Dot-to-Dot Mapping. Using the Rand McNally site, I’ve printed out some simple road maps covering the states and highways where we’ll be traveling. The kids have to observe the cities we pass through and the highways we’re on, and draw a line to show our route on their maps. They can connect us from town to town. I may do a reward: for everyone who correctly draws our route, they will get to choose which restaurant we stop at for one of our meals.

Another activity I print out for them are State Facts and State Flags for them to color in, when we enter each state. EnchantedLearning.com is an awesome resource for this and for hundreds of other printouts and activities as well. You can use their site for free, or pay the measly $20 a year to get full access and banner-free printouts—this site is well worth it, you’ll use it a lot.

On our trips my kids enjoy their own personal activity books. There are a myriad of sites where you can get free printable activity pages for kids, some are specifically geared for travel. Many are educational as well. Here are my three favorites:  EnchantedLearning.com, Crayola.com, KOA.com.