Well, we are now 8 days from our summer vacation. We'll have a 6 hour+ drive to the beach. So, with three kids, I'm trying now to figure out some ways to keep them well entertained on the road. If you have ideas, feel free to comment! Other than the standard DVD system in the car (which works, but the headphones are iffy), Game Boys and games, and iPods... I'm trying to make sure I'm well-stocked in other areas as well. I know my kids love their TV and video games, but even they can't tolerate 6+ hours of them (I think).
So, I've spent much of the morning surfing the web printing out activity pages. Here are some sites where I found a lot so far. If I find more, I'll post them later:
http://www.momsminivan.com/ I love this site full of neat articles, great ideas and links to products for traveling, and more. I was able to find a "travel scavenger hunt" sheet that is perfect for the younger ones too. My rising-first grader can read, but not some of the words I found on the typical list. This sheet has pictures next to the words so she can play along too! I also found a list of the 50 states where you check off a state each time you see a license plate from there. I printed several sheets. My goal (ha ha ha) is to have my two oldest play together and compete against Nana and PapPap and Aunt Tracy and Uncle Tim... all of whom are caravaning down to the beach along with us.
Ratatouille Activity Book This is a 19 page coloring/activity book about the movie Ratatouille with coloring, mazes, dot-to-dot, and more.
www.puzzle-club.com This has some great wordsearches for the kids.
www.debidawn.com/puzzlegame.htm Lots of wordsearches and mazes and more to print out.
www.edhelper.com I was able to find a few math-review sheets in particular for the kids to practice. Somehow they like that!
www.wordlibs.com , www.madglibs.com These offer printable mad-libs for the kids to play with in the car.
www.printables4kids.com , www.freestuff4kids.net Neat printable pages and many more fun things for kids, including play money and links to great Kids' sites.
My neighbor Joanna just informed me of something available at our local library. (I must admit, we visit the library 2-3 times a year if we are lucky... that's something I need to start doing more often!) They are called PlayAways, listening devices completely loaded with books-on-tape. I just requested a few from our local library. Hopefully they'll be in by next week. The kids can listen to some favorite kids' books, while I attempt to learn a little Mandarin Chinese. When we travel in a couple of years, it would be nice to know a little of their language, huh?
We also recently realized that our kids' Game Boy Advance systems have "VIDEO"s available. They are full-length movies and/or cartoons that can simply be viewed on the GBAs on a cartridge similar to the games. So, I ordered a few of those on eBay too. They seem to be hard to find in stores, besides I usually like eBay prices. My youngest can't quite play a game yet, but he'll think he's big stuff listening to a movie on the GameBoy with headphones. :-)
I did a lot of searching and found things here and there, but the above were some of the most-used sites. If anyone has other ideas or more websites to check out, please leave me a message. I'd love to check them out.
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