Tips for road trips with kids

How to prepare for a road trip

Know your route

Try to plan your entire route before you set off. This includes where you might stop for food, fuel, or even just to stretch your legs for a bit. 

Even if you have a satnav, it’s a good idea to plan ahead in case of road closures or excess traffic.

Check your car

If you’re going on a long journey, you’ll need to make sure your car is up to the challenge. These are the most important things to check before a long journey:

• Tyres: Your tyre tread should be a minimum of 1.6mm to be road legal. Your tyres grip the road better with a deeper tread, which makes for better and safer driving.
• Oil: Oil lubricates the internal parts of your engine and keeps it running smoothly. If you have low oil levels, or dirty oil, this could cause you issues on a long journey.
• Lights: Always check your lights before you go on a long journey, especially if you’ll be travelling when it’s dark.

Brush up on your road signs

Depending on your destination, you may see some unfamiliar road signs along the way. Do some research into the common road signs in the areas you’ll be travelling through, so you don’t run into any surprises.

How to keep your kids entertained

Give them control

Spending hours in the car can be boring for kids. To counteract this, you can give them control over small things to make them feel included.

Food

While you may be tempted to pack snacks yourself just to save time, why not try letting your kids choose for themselves? This has the added bonus of limiting any arguments about who gets what. 

You can also leave it up to your kids to pick where you stop for food while you’re on your journey.

Activities

Give your kids their own bag to pack. They can pack their own games, toys, and other activities so they always have something to do. 

Music

If you don’t want to be stuck listening to the latest viral song over and over again, make it a mini-project to create a road trip playlist with your kids. Figure out how many songs you need to last the whole journey and get your kids to add songs to a playlist until it’s the right length.  

Let them know what to expect

Give your kids an idea of what to expect before you set off. 

If you’re going to be passing any notable landmarks, tell them how long it will take to get there and make a game of seeing who can spot them first.

You can also tell them when and where you’ll be stopping and how long each bit of the journey will take. That way, if they decide to watch a film or TV, they’ll know how long they have before they’ll need to turn it off. 

Game ideas

If you want to play along with your kids, here are some ideas for games you can play while driving:

• I, Spy – try switching it up by using both letters and colours
• Who Am I? – Pick a famous person (real or fictional) and have your kids ask yes or no questions to figure out who you are
• The Number Plate Game – there are two ways to play this; the first is to see who can get from A to Z the fastest using only the number plates you can see. The second is to see who can spell the longest word using only letters on the number plates of surrounding vehicles
• Animal, Vegetable or Mineral? – similar to Who Am I?, but you can be anything as long as it can be classified as an animal (including humans) a vegetable (any kind of plant) or a mineral (pretty much everything else)
• Old MacDonald’s Farm – get your kids to keep track of any animals they see by the road while you’re driving and by the time you reach your destination, they’ll have their very own collection of farm animals.

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