Keeping Kids Entertained When Traveling Over the Holidays

Traveling with Children over the holidays is a challenge for many parents. not only is there the problem with the holiday traffic and the delays in flights, but most of the time you will have a long drive or delays that will stretch anyone's nerves. So what can you pack and take with you to keep your kids occupied while traveling to your destination.

 Games are one way to occupy the little ones. There are many games that you can play while traveling in the cars. Before leaving you will want to get some things together so that you can keep them occupied. Most vehicles will have the DVD players that may occupy them some of the time, but they may get tired of that quickly. So you will want to have several different fun games to give them to do when they get bored with one thing.

There are some great games that you can quickly put together when traveling, you will want the games to be entertaining, and not have many pieces. If you play like a car bingo - you will want to have the cards already made up and give them a bingo dabber or a marker so that they can mark each card and not have little markers that they have to put on each number. So to be efficient you will want to make up several different cards for each game. The time that you spend at home preparing the games will be well worth it when you are in the car traveling.

Car bingo is always a fun game to do. You can do several different variations of this game depending on the age of the children. For younger children, you may want to have colors. They will look out the windows and find different colors of the cars. For older children you may want to have numbers - or letters that they will find on billboards, and license plates. You can also do the states on the license plates. This one is a little harder but can keep children busy for several hours.  Get little prizes to give out on the trip so that they will feel like they have won something.

Name that song is always a good one to play as a family. Make a CD that they will have to name the song - or have them finish the next line of the song. This is fun trying to remember the song.  You could also have karaoke. Download and record the songs then type up the words and print them out so that they can sing along.

Make it a learning experience. Kids are naturally willing to learn. They like to learn more when they are not really thinking about learning. They will also like to show off how much they know. One fun game is to give them an outline of the United States and have them write the names of the states on there. It's not as easy as it sounds. But it will be fun. Give them math problems and time them and see which child gets the most done correctly.  Give them spelling tests to test their skills. Give them riddles - Kids really love riddles to figure out on the road. You can even use the riddles and make them up as you go along with things that you see along side of the road. Even the kids will love to make up their own riddles to stump you.

No matter how far you are traveling over thanksgiving to visit family you will want to keep the kids busy on the journey. Planning before you go on the trip is one way to have a more relaxing trip... Make sure you have games and activities to keep your children entertained and give them less chance to fight in the back seat and make it more stressful for you on your trip this holiday season.