Taking your kids on a road trip is an exciting adventure, but it can also lead to restless children asking, “Are we there yet?” These road trip activities for kids will keep your kids entertained during the long hours on the road, and us adults might just have some fun too!
Entertaining kids on a road trip doesn’t have to mean hours of screen time (but including screen time is not a bad thing!), make your family road trip more enjoyable and memorable by planning some fun activities that will keep your kids entertained throughout the journey. From fun family games, to simple crafts and a few free printables, these kids car activities will keep everyone happy.
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We love a good family road trip. From a day trip, to a weekend away, a road trip across the country, or a family holiday in a camper van, we’ve been road tripping with our kids since they were babies. When you pack four kids of various ages into a camper van you learn the hard way about what works and what doesn’t, and how to keep kids entertained in the car.
If you are taking your kids on a trip solo, try these tips for a road trip with kids by yourself.
The Best Road Trip Activities for Kids
From interactive games the whole family will love, to creative ideas, quiet activities, free printable road trip games, and some of our favourite road trip toys and activities we have compiled a list of the best road trip activities for kids that will help keep boredom at bay and make road tripping much more fun for everyone!
Quiet Road Trip Activities
I’ve put these quiet road trip ideas for kids at the top of the list because you definitely don’t want to miss these. When you need a little peace and quiet, or just want your three year old to stop asking questions for five minutes, try some of these quiet car activities for kids
- Books/Magazines
Make sure you have a stack of your child’s favourite books. For little ones choose a selection of books on their current interests – a few news ones and a few old favourites. For older kids a couple of chapter books and/or a kids magazine is a great option. Seek and Find books are great car books for kids of all ages! - Audio Books
Audio books will save your sanity on long car trips! There are lots of free audiobooks for kids you can try, or see if your local library has an audio book borrowing service. - Podcasts
From science, to stories, and everything in between there are so many kid-friendly podcasts to choose from, and they are usually so fun and interesting the whole family will enjoy them which means they are a great option if you have kids of multiple ages. You can find some of our favourite podcasts for kids here, and some more kids podcasts here. - Screen time.
If you are worried about too much screen time while travelling, don’t be. This is an out of the ordinary situation so using screens a little more than you normally would is a reasonable adjustment. If you are looking for some screen time options that are creative, interesting and positive try this huge list of guilt free screen time options for kids.
Road Trip Games and Family Activities
Get the whole family involved in these fun road trip games! Most of these games can be played without any supplies at all, but some need pencil and paper or have a printable option.
- What Am I Game
This game is a cross between celebrity head and twenty questions and it’s easy enough for little ones to play (with some help) and fun enough to keep older kids engaged too. All you need is some paper and a pen – or our free printable ‘What Am I?’ game cards. - Summer Pictionary Game
This summer pictionary game is a fun option that kids of all ages will love, and these free printable summer pictionary cards makes it even easier to play! - I spy
The classic game of “I Spy” is always a hit with kids during road trips. Change it up a bit by making a rule that the item has to be inside the car, or outside the car. Make it easier for pre-readers by spying things of a certain colour, or make it harder for older kids by going through the alphabet – so the first person has to spy something that starts with an A, the next something that starts with a B! - Battleships
Battleships is a fun game that the whole family can play with pencil and paper, or you could buy the travel version of the Hasbro battleships game. You can also use this fab free printable battleship game which is a smaller version which is quicker to play and perfect for younger kids. - Car Karaoke
Make a playlist of the best family karaoke songs and turn up the volume! This a great way to boost the mood and get everyone moving in their seats a little which can really help get the wiggles out. Take it a step further by judging performances and crowing a car karaoke champion! - Would You Rather Game
This silly game has you asking and answering ‘would you rather’ questions. The questions can be serious or silly! Would you rather swim at the beach or in a pool? Would you rather be as small as an ant or as big as an elephant? Have fun coming up with your own questions or try one of these Would Your Rather printable question cards.
Creative Road Trip Activities for Kids
These creative art, craft and construction activities are a great way to keep kids busy on a long car trip. They all require a few supplies but we try to keep those to a bare minimum.
- Drawing
Drawing is such a great activity for a road trip as it works for all different ages and there are lots of options, activities and ideas you can try to keep kids engaged. We usually choose coloured pencils for road trips, especially for younger kids as they won’t make a mess and there are no lids to lose. If you don’t have a travel tray (see below for our recommendation) a clipboard is a great idea, or a plastic tub with a flat lid. For toddlers attach a large pencil to a clipboard with a string so they can’t drop and loose it! Lots of these drawing ideas are perfect for road trips, especially these drawing challenge cards. See below for even more free printable drawing activities! - Lego
If your kids love Lego, putting together a travel Lego set is a great idea. Grab a plastic container, glue some Lego boards to the lid, and pop a small amount of Legos inside and you have a travel Lego set. If you include a couple of mini figures, and a range of basic blocks (don’t bother including wheels or special pieces) you’ll be amazed at what your kids can build with just a few pieces. - Pie Cleaner Constructions
Grab a packet of coloured pipe cleaners and pop them into your into your road trip activity kit. They are low mess, quiet, and you will be amazed at how many different things you can make from pipe cleaners! - Journaling.
Encourage your kids to document their road trip in a travel journal. Grab a notebook, some pencils and a glue stick or tape and encourage them to write or draw about the trip and the places you visit. They can also collect mementos like ticket stubs or pressed flowers to add to their journal. Journaling with kids is such a great way to encourage creativity and learning. - Stickers!
Stickers are a great, low mess, creative activity that kids love. You can buy reusable sticker books for kids, or just grab a whole lot of fun stickers and give your kids a notebook or paper and let them be creative! If you have little kids, peel off the white part that surrounds the stickers to make them easier for little hands to peel off the backing!
Free Printable Road Trip Activities
Printables make organising road trip activities for kids super easy! You can easily print out multiple copies and have lots of different options for all different age groups. It’s a great idea to have a hidden stash of printed activities that you can bring out when things get particularly tense!
- Free Printable Drawing Prompts
Drawing prompts are perfect for road trips, and you can find all our free printable drawing prompts here – there is even a road trip drawing prompt set! - Find and Colour Printables
Our free printable find and colour pages are perfect for road trips. Try the summer find and colour, the alphabet find and colour, or the outdoor adventure find and colour, - Colouring Pages
There are so many free printable colouring pages online that you can easily find some that match with your child’s current interests. We love coloring pages that also encourage creativity and imagination like these free printable picture frame drawing prompts and these shape drawing prompts, or these mandala drawing prompts. - Mazes
Mazes are a great activity for kids of all ages as you can print mazes at all different levels. You can find lots of very cool mazes here, or try our free printable rainbow mazes. - Writing Prompts.
If you have kids who love creative writing a long car ride is the perfect time to write a story! If you have kids who need a little help to get started try these free printable super fun writing prompts.
Road Trip Essentials for Kids
Now you’ve got lots of ideas for road trip activities for your kids, take some time to think about a few other things that will make road tripping easier. These are a few of our road trip essentials that have made travelling with kids easier for us.
- Kids Travel Tray
If you have enough room in your car then a travel tray for each kid is a live saver! It gives them a stable surface for all kinds of activities, including eating, and has lots of storage to keep items and activities within easy reach. We really like this Kenly travel tray because it has a little lip on the front which helps to keep everything contained on the tray and not in the depths of the car seat! - Backseat Car Organiser
If you don’t have enough room for a travel tray (or even if you do and just want more storage) these backseat car organisers are a decent alternative. They have lots of storage, and are a great way to keep a tablet secure if you have little ones. - Kids Headphones
Even if you want to limit screen time on road trips, listening to music, or audiobooks, or podcasts is a great option and you’ll be thankful for headphones so you don’t have to listen to the same song over and over, and your kids don’t have to argue about who gets to choose the music or podcast. We like these headphones for little kids, these are a good budget option, and if you want to splurge on wireless headphones (bear in mind you’ll need to charge them) these are great. - Travel Pillow
If you are hoping your kids might sleep for some of the trip, a travel pillow can help make that happen. We’ve found that some of our kids hate them, but some LOVE them and sleep so much better. Travel pillows with lots of chin support like this Bcozzy one seem to work well for kids, and it comes in child sizes too.
Our Camper Van Family Road Trip
We are always up for a bit of a family road trip around here… though a road trip that involves living in a little metal box on wheels for five days, that was an entirely new adventure!
We won six nights in a Britz camper van in a competition, we’ve never done a camper van rip but we packed up a whole lot of stuff, strapped four kids in across the back seat and took off down the coast for a few days!
We decided not to drive too far as the idea of all four kids strapped in across one back seat was a little daunting, but actually the seating arrangements were pretty spacious, even with two car seats. So we headed to the Bellarine Peninsula, spent some time at the beach, and had a day at Adventure Park Victoria. Then we headed a little further down the coast to Wye River. It’s such a lovely spot and the big kids tried body boarding for the first time and we taught them all how to make drip castles.
It was a short trip but we had fun playing some road trip games and the kids did lots of drawing and simple crafts both while we were travelling and once we were at the camp ground.
Have you ever done a camper van trip? Or are you more of a caravan type? Or maybe camping? Or perhaps a five star hotel??
{Disclosure: We won the Britz trip as part of a blogger competition, one of the requirements of winning was to blog about our trip. We were given tickets to Adventure Park as a Christmas Gift from Porter Novelli Melbourne. I was not compensated in any other way for this post. The opinions expressed in this post are purely my own.}
We have taken the kids camping a few times and so want to take the kids on a road trip in a van. We were planning on doing it last year but out baby HATES the car passionately so have decided to wait til they are a bit older!! looks like fun tho!
We rented an RV 2 years ago to drive with our 5 youngest children from westrn Canada to Disneyland. We went in off season so that rates were a lot cheaper. We found that it was a very fun and economical way to travel and would definitely do it again.
Nath and I campervanned across Europe for 3 months a decade ago, and across North America for 9 months a few years ago. Both trips were pre-kids. Think it would be a very different holiday now!