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Summer Travel Ideas. Keep those kids busy.

Whether you’re road tripping or flying, some of these, or all of these, ideas will help pass the time quickly!

Yay for summer! It’s that time of year. No school. Warmer weather. Swimming and sprinklers and biking and late nights and lightning bugs. Cook outs and picnics and vacations and fireworks and wow. Summer’s got it going on!

We also like to plan a family vacation every year. Most years we went to Rehoboth beach, Delaware (about 4 hour drive). Last year we went crazy and went to Outer Banks North Carolina! That’s a 10-12 hour drive for us! With. Kids. Yeah. I know. Nuts!

But, I was a mom with a plan. I searched the web and of course Pinterest! And came up with a bunch of ideas that I used last year and now, this year. We are flying to Florida this year. (2 hour drive to airport, 2 ½ hours flight).

I tried to find different things that weren’t electronics. Not that we wouldn’t use electronics, because we totally did and do!

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Here’s a list of things I found:

Travel binder. I filled this with tons of printables. I was a printing fool! And I put a cover sheet on the front so the kids could tell whose was whose binder. I did some printables that were the same and some that were age appropriate. See end of post for links to some free printables I found mostly through Pinterest.

Pipe cleaners. They could bend and wrap and make whatever they wanted. I cut some in half so they had different sizes. My daughter played with these more than my son.

Legos box. I bought a cheap pencil box. Hot glued a base piece of Legos that I cut to fit into the pencil box so they had somewhere to build and threw in some loose pieces of Legos. (link below).

Audio books. Surprisingly this worked for a little while off and on. We got some audio books from the library and tested them out before the trip and the kids liked them!

I also included:

Tablets (They each got a regular sized tablet and a mini sized, for fun!).              

Coloring books.

Crayons, colored pencils, regular pencils (in their own pencil pouch that zipped and had 3 ring binder holes to put in travel binder).

I found these super cute, plastic “Ziploc” pouches that had 3 ring binder holes. In these I put stencils, lots of stickers, mini post it notes, little tape dispensers (like washi tape). The pouches went in their back pack because they were too big for binder.

Little toys. Cars, mini figures (like ninja turtles, littlest pet shop, etc) so the kids could play pretend.

Snacks, snacks, snacks. Can not forget snacks! I did over pack the snacks, but we used them through out the week, so no biggie.

And of course, good ol’ radio.

All of this was a surprise for the kiddos for the trip. They had no clue! Each kid had there own back pack with all of their goodies packed inside. Snacks were packed in their lunch box. They also had a blanket, neck pillow and sweatshirt.

I bought over the back seat organizers so they had some things (books, electronics, tissues, other random toys,etc.) packed in there too, easy to reach, right in front of them. We still use them! They are awesome.

So, for our trip this year, I’ll have to cut it down a little, since we’re flying and won’t have as much room to pack stuff.  But at least I have some awesome ideas to keep them entertained!

Do you take a family vacation? Will you use some of theses ideas?

*And for being awesome and checking out my blog, here’s a free I SPY Summertime printable! Enjoy!*

Until next time…

*Here is my personal Pinterest Board-travelin with my bugs that has all the travel ideas that I’ve found.

Here’s a few of the links where you’ll find:

• Travel Binder I used the printable cover page and she has a list of free printables. I printed some of mine from here. Via livingwellmom.com
• Lego pencil box This was super easy and my kids still have them. (Although, my son’s needs glued again!) Via housewifeeclectic.com
• Printables More fun printables. Via muminthemadhouse.com
• Drawing prompts These were fun for kiddos too. Via picklebums.com

And much more. Again, visit my personal Pinterest Board above for many more ideas that I wish I came up with, but alas, I did not.