You can only answer questions about the location of your destination and break up fights between siblings so many times. If you plan to take a road trip, or just need an easy distraction for rough riders, put together a package of coloring projects for your kids. When they are busy and happy coloring, they won’t be asking for an update on the length of the trip.
Coloring Supplies
Many art supplies exist to let kids fill their papers with color and fill their minds with activity. However, they are not all ideal for the car. The inside of your car can get very hot or cold, depending on the time of year. It’s also a moving space, one that tosses and tumbles as you drive. Avoid wax crayons that may melt in the heat and markers that may freeze, explode or drop and stain. Colored pencils for little kids or even chalks for older ones may be the most stable products.
Games
You can buy activity books, located near the coloring books in retail and book stores, that are filled with games for kids to play. To save yourself some money, you can print and photocopy pages filled with dots, lines and squiggles. Encourage kids to use their imaginations to create drawings and pictures, incorporating the lines and dots.
Papers
Let kids experiment with different textures and papers while riding in the car. Gather scrap papers and pages you might otherwise throw away for kids to draw on and collect them in a box or cloth bag. Receipts, old maps, construction paper, business cards, flyers and other salvaged items provide a variety of textures for coloring on. Dropping in a handful of recycled items every few days keeps the paper supply intriguing for kids.
Memories
Give each child a journal that he keeps in the car. This may be a large sketch pad from an art supply store or a small notebook from a drug store. Either way, encourage kids to draw and color their experiences and the sights they see. After a day at camp or school, ask kids to draw what they did that day. As you drive to Grandma’s house, encourage little artists to draw the landscape around them.
Storage
Keep all the coloring supplies stored in the car, ready for use whenever kids get restless. Purchase a plastic container that fits under your car seats. If your kids are still struggling with sharing, give everyone his own box. Place colored pencils, a plastic bag full of scrap papers, a journal and any other supplies, such as stencils, in the boxes.
Photo Credit
- Coloring pens isolated image by TekinT from Fotolia.com
