This post is sponsored by Nuffnang and NRMA Insurance
Busy Basket of Activities for Road Trips: Road trips with the family are a wonderful opportunity to spend quality time together and create long-lasting memories. However, for children, sitting in a car for long periods of time can create boredom and irritability, leading to unwanted distractions for the driver.
Keeping children busy and entertained on long road trips reduces distractions for the driver and makes getting from A to B a lot safer.full of activities for kids to do on family road trips is a great way to entertain them and reduce these distractions, allowing the driver to concentrate on the road when driving..
Busy Basket of Fun
When considering the items to place into our Busy Basket, I wanted to have games and activities that did not include lots of small parts that could get lost easily in the car. I also wanted to include items that my children are interested in, including some of their favourite toys and books.Plastic zip lock bags are great for storing and organising different items, games and toys separately and for easy access our Busy Basket sits on the middle seat between two booster seats.
What you will find in our Busy Basket:
- Colouring in books.
- Threading cardboard shapes with rope.
- Card Games – Go Fish and Snap.
- Tin of pencils, crayons and textures
- Stickers – Make pictures out of stickers.
- Blank Notebooks – writing, drawing, Noughts and Crosses, and placing stickers on.
- Finger Puppets – make up stories.
- Several favourite children’s books.
- Kaleidoscope (favourite toy).
We also placed a homemade activity into our Busy Basket, Threading Felt Squares. This is a fabulous quiet and educational activity that will entertain children and is super easy to make!
Threading Felt Squares
Threading Felt Squares is a fine motor activity that requires concentration as you thread the button on the end of a ribbon through the centre of a hole on felt squares. Children can explore colours, make patterns and count as they thread the felt squares onto the ribbon.
Some More Busy Ideas for Kids
- Etcha-sketch or Magna Doodle for drawing.
- Felt Board activities.
- Magnets on a baking tray.
- Play Simon Says or Eye Spy.
- Play Spot – spotting objects such as cars a certain colour.
- Sing Songs or listen to Adio Books
- Puzzles
- Take a map or atlas that your older kids can use and follow along the journey.
- Take photos
An Important Message
Driving with little ones in the back seat can be distracting for drivers at times but one of the biggest distractions on our roads today are our mobile phones and texting while driving. This video is a good reminder of how a few seconds of taking our eyes off the road to read a text message can quickly and easily end in an accident. If we need to use our mobile phones, we should pull over in a safe place. If we’re about to drive, we place our mobile phone in the boot of the car or back seat where we cannot reach it while driving.
NRMA Insurance’s virtual Crashed Car Showroom is an online experience that people can enjoy and learn more about car safety. There are some really interesting videos and features to try out.
Be sure to check out the Safety Hub on NRMA Insurance’s website where you can find lots of useful information such as finding out the safety rating of your car and what questions to ask when buying a car.
How do you keep distractions to a minimal when you’re driving? I would love to hear your ideas!!
