Traveling with Kids- Travel Binders

Traveling with young children isn't easy.  Especially when you have to travel a long distance.

We recently drove to South Carolina to visit my oldest son.  We live in Iowa.  We could have drove straight east to South Carolina, that would have only taken us 16 hours.  But why would we do that?  We have never been south.  We wanted to drive through and experience as many states as we could.  So we drove south, and then headed east.  We spent 7 of our 9 day vacation driving  We stopped at random places and got out and walked around and explored.  We visited the St. Louis Arch in Missouri, Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, stopped and had some BBQ in Memphis, and spent a few hours at Tybee Beach off of Georgia, to name a few.

My point is we spent many hours driving in the van with our 3 youngest children, 9, 8, and 4 years old.  Before we left I made up these binders for each of them with activities to do while in the car. They were such a hit I thought I would share them with you.

Each child got their own binder (with names on the front, so no one fights over who is whos). 

Inside the binder I included a print out of the United States.  This way the could color the states we went through or see what state is next and follow along the trip. 

 I printed off a packet of information for each state that we were to visit (11 states in all!)  As we entered each state I gave them the packet.  I three hole punched them so they could add them to their binders as we went along.

The packet had fun facts about the state, such as state bird, flower, motto.  I also included a picture of the state and an area at the bottom to write what they had learned about the state.  For the older boys I also included a word search.  Here is the link where I found the printables for the states!  

We bought some travel BINGO cards but to give it a little variety I printed off some different versions for us to try.  I bought little prizes and treats that I kept up front with me and whenever someone got BINGO they would win a prize.  The kids loved it.  We played A LOT of BINGO!  I put the BINGO cards in plastic sleeves and gave everyone a dry erase marker so we could reuse them.

Momsminivan has lots of great travel  printables.  I printed off these travel cards below for each of the kids.  I laminated them, punched a hole in the corner and held them altogether with a ring clip.

Being prepared and having entertainment can make those long car rides a lot more enjoyable for everyone.  I am very lucky because all 3 of my younger kids are great travelers!  However, having these binders made all the difference.  It kept them busy, they learned about the states we were visiting and we played some games together as a family.