This entry was inspired by our impending 4 hour car trip to Maine. We are headed north from Providence to visit with family and attend my cousin’s wedding. I have to disclose that with the trip speeding toward us and general life busyness, I ended up buying* some toys for our trip to entertain my 2.5 year old daughter, but as I hunted around this week for things to buy I found a lot of this stuff can be made at home. So I decided to accumulate projects that might interest our readers if you’ve got the time before you hit the road.
Lacing cards, these are great, some fun simple shapes made from colorful cardboard with holes punched around the edge with a string to “sew” through the holes. See here for how to make them at Feeling Stitchy, CraftPad and HubPages.
An I Spy Game is another great one. It’s one of those games where the child can shake the bag/bottle to find items hiding inside. It can be a lot of fun for them to try to search for something inside and them look for an associated item in the outside environment as you drive, that will stretch the game out a bit.
How to make your own I Spy Game.
Have a budding artist? Drawing and coloring on paper and coloring books can provide lots of old fashion fun, too. A couple of good ways to keep it organized is by making a simple tote with crayon compartments on the outside and the paper and coloring books to go inside the tote. Here are instructions for a crayon tote. Another smaller option is a roll-up crayon pouch. This is good for the car, throw it in your purse or keep at arms reach for sudden creativity. Here are great step by step directions to make your own crayon pouch from Nested.
Become a back seat jewelry designer. OK, that is only if you like wearing pasta jewels. A fun thing to entertain your kids is making some necklaces and bracelets from pasta shapes and yarn. This one couldn’t be easier. All you need is a bag of pasta and some yarn or shoe laces. Fill a zip lock bag with a mix of pasta shapes and sizes with holes suitable to be strung. Voila, they’ll be stringing pasta beads and making you wear it at the next rest area before you know it!
*You can read about the toys that I did buy at my other blog HealthyTot.
Or, head to Etsy to check out their selection of I Spy toys and Crayon Holders.
