What to do with the kids in the car on a road trip?

Have a summer road trip coming up? There are many fun road trip activities to engage a whole family when riding in the car. Here are some fun apps that are creative, require some visual perceptual and visual motor skills but mainly just plain fun – great for occupying kids on a summer road trip (or rainy day for short durations) – And FREE (today at least…)!

 Oscar Pizza Chef Pro – by Timbuktu for iPhone and iPad provide a pizza creating, baking and monster eating experience. Most kids love pizza, let them make and have their pizza too on your iDevice!

Toontastic Jr. Pirates – for iPad only provides a story telling experience using story starters, stickers and prompts for beginning, middle and ending of a story. Create a video cartoon and share with others!

 Itsy Car – for iPhone and iPad allows the user to choose the design of a car and create a track with a variety of different track configuration pieces to drive on. Once your track is done it allows the driver a virtual view of the track from the drivers seat. Some speed controls are provided when driving on the track. Provides some visual perceptual and planning when creating the track. Saving and sharing is also provided in this app!

Some summertime fun apps for car rides, rainy days or quite moments (short periods for screen time for kids are recommended!) when kids aren’t outside moving and playing this summer!

Don’t have a iPad for kids this summer for road trips? That really is okay – you’ll have fun with your kids playing road games – I have spent hours playing the alphabet sign game, I Spy, looking for state licenses, reading appropriate riddles and jokes, listening to a story on CD, singing songs (The Five Little Ducks was a favorite with little kids).  You can spend hours doing road trip games with kids! Here are a few websites if you want a few more ideas:

• Classic Road Trip Games – http://spoonful.com/family-fun/classic-road-trip-games
• Road Trip Boredom Busters – http://kidshealth.org/parent/firstaid_safe/outdoor/road_trip.html
• 10 Best Family Road Trip Car Games – http://www.mamaloveslists.com/10-best-family-road-trip-car-games.html

Have fun whether on a road trip or just having some summer fun!

Carol