I’m trying to finish up all of my Disney posts and want to make sure the things that we did to make our car ride a little easier. Remember for reference that our kids were 4.5 and 2 on this trip and the trip was roughly 11-12 hours. We have a dvd player in our car and used it (more liberally on the way back than the way down) but I tried to prepare other things for the kids to do other than just sit and watch the tv.
I used some galvanized buckets that we had at our house to create buckets for each of the kids with treats to dole out throughout the trip. Some things were basic and some I specifically went out shopping for. Having new items for the kids to play with and explore I think made a big difference rather than packing things that they already had played with and seen. It made the everyday items in their buckets special and that much more fun to open.
Here’s a rough overview of what I included in their buckets:
-New books to read
-New coloring books and crayons
-Dry erase board and markers
-Stickers and pieces of paper to decorate
-Felt busy books
-Popsicle Stick Puppets
-Popsicle Stick Puzzles
-Flash cards
-A soft ball for James
-A letter pole for Charlotte with stickers to attach
-Read Aloud Story Books (I love the message of the ones from places like Lifeway but the Hallmark ones are classics too and these were by far the favorites on the trip because the kids could “read” the story themselves.)
I pulled a lot of things from what we already had stashed away at the house. Book orders at school are a great place to get inexpensive books and I save happy meal books (ask for the three and under toy always, its almost always a book). I also save party favors and other random toys that we come across for times like these. For this trip though I also headed out to do some shopping at the Dollar Tree, Party City, and Target’s Dollar Spot. I found a lot of items (crayons, coloring books, flash cards, stickers, dry erase boards) all in Disney theme for a small amount of money.
A few things that I read about online (on some of those websites I mentioned) was to take a rimmed cookie sheet or a travel tray for your kids to use in the car. I ended up just taking large pieces of corrugated cardboard that I had from shipping so many things and it worked fine for them to color on. I also had picked up some small trinkets (hair clips, small bouncy balls, etc) thinking that I might do the “Mickey leaves a treat each night” thing but I ended up not following through with that. Don’t stress yourself out about doing what everyone else is doing, just do what makes your life easier!
