Easy Travel Binder For Kids
We are on the brink of our first big family vacation! It’s very exciting to say the least. My kids are going to see mountains and the ocean for the first time…which is another big deal. Yes, we are midwesterners…so any elevation is huge. In planning our trip…one of my biggest concerns is how the kids would do traveling. It was their first big car trip and I wanted to make sure they had enough activities, besides watching movies and their tablets, to keep them occupied!
My kids are relatively good travelers, at least on the short weekend trips we have made…so I wasn’t in a panic or anything, but I wanted to touch base with other families and get some travel tips. I received some great ideas from my facebook group and found many more on Pinterest! Two of my favorite ideas were to create a travel binder with activity sheets and to have treat bags for the kids to open up at certain times during the trip.
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PIN FOR YOUR NEXT TRIP!
Creating A Travel Binder
I absolutely fell in love with the travel binder idea and it is so easy to make. OK, maybe I am a little partial to anything binder related, but it is still the perfect activity for any travel!
WHAT YOU WILL NEED?
- Binder (I picked up three 1/2 ” binders at the dollar store)
- Sheet Protectors
- Printables (see below)
- Pencil Pouch
- Dry Erase Markers
I created binder covers and they are available for you! The name is left blank for you to write your own child’s name on the cover sheet.
WHAT TO PUT INSIDE?
1)Map
After you have the binder and the pencil pouch, now it is time to focus on activities. One of the best ideas I found was to put a map of your trip. This allows your kids to trace the road trip with their dry erase marker! No more…are we there yet?!
To print the map out, I used google maps and then clicked on print screen. I pulled my print screen up in a photo editing site and cropped it to just show the trip. We have a couple different destinations on our trip…so I printed out a map for each trip we have and labeled it at the top, including our trip home.
The map idea came from Living Well Mom, she has a great travel binder post with links to several great printables as well! Check her post out HERE.
2) Licence Plate Game
The license plate game is a classic, one most of us probably played when we were young. However, it is still so fun to play and now there are so many cool printables available.
I actually printed off two different license plate games. One has all the license plates shown, which is super cute. However, I was a little worried about my youngest one being able to find the state by their license plate, so I printed off a map one too. Plus this way they can also see how far away the car came from, which is kind of neat.
LICENSE PLATE MAP GAME from travelwithkids.about.com
LICENSE PLATE PRINTABLE from iheartorganizing.com (scroll halfway down the page to find)
3) Travel Bingo and Maze
What is a road trip if you don’t have fun looking for things along the way! Travel bingo could be done individually or against their siblings. The beauty of dry erase is they can play the game more than once, especially if you have competitive children and need a rematch.
I also printed off a couple of different mazes, easy for my youngest, a little harder for my middle child and then much harder for my oldest.
TRAVEL BINGO from iheartorganizing.com (scroll halfway down page)
TRAVEL MAZES from kidsactivities.com
4) I Spy and Word Search
My girls will especially love this game because they love anything I Spy. With this printable, you have to find how many of each item is in the picture and then mark the number down on the next sheet. The printable does include a key, so you can make sure you have found all of them.
I SPY PRINTABLE from livelaughrowe.com
Here is a Restaurant I Spy too! Then the last activity I placed inside the binder was a word search. My kids always love doing word searches, and I love that this one is road trip related!
RESTAURANT I SPY from 3 Boys and A Dog
ROAD TRIP WORD SEARCH from Arsty Fartsy Mama
5) Coloring
In addition to all the activities, I have also added some coloring sheets to each binder. You can store the coloring sheets in the sheet protectors and then pull them out to color. The binder is the perfect hard surface to color on and the pencil pouch works great to hold all your crayons, gel pens, or anything your child likes to color with.
TREAT BAGS
To add a little excitement to a long trip, a friend of mine suggested treat bags…which I thought was a great idea! So I planned to make 5 treat bags for each kid…basically one bag for every 6 hours we are in the car (including our trip home). I ended up buying two prizes and then 3 candy treats for each child.
TREAT BAG LABELS from Mother’s Niche
To figure out when they should open the treat bags, I used google maps and looked up the halfway point for each travel day (or approximately halfway point). I printed off tags and then wrote the cities on each tag.
I used a different color washi tape for each child.
I have to admit, I am just as excited as the kids for our first family vacation…which probably shows in the amount of energy I put into the travel activities! What I like about the binders, is they are really inexpensive to make and honestly not very time consuming. Sometimes a little effort goes a long way…and this project is one of those.
Thanks so much for checking out my post and happy travels!
