10 car journey activities to do with your toddler

We have a long car journey coming up, and so I'm putting together a bag of activities to keep Harry busy. There isn't a lot of space between the car seats in the back, but most of these activities will require a certain level of intervention, either to keep him interested or to keep frustration to a minimum. I'm also trying to come up with activities to keep him amused by himself.

I'll be taking a small tray for some of the activities. And I'll be sure to report back on how well they worked! Here's what I've come up with! Most of these activities need a tray to keep everything together.

Laminated pictures - themed collections of images to look at together. I found these on various websites and have printed them out in colour so that we can go through and name the different objects.

Aquadoodle Mini Mats - we have a couple of sets of these. They are little blank mats that you scribble on with the special wet pen and the picture appears. When the water is dry you can reuse them. They are brilliant for keeping little ones busy and don't make any mess, you just need to make sure that you have water to refill the pens if they get really keen.

Playdoh -  I bought this little Play-Doh Mini Fun Factory which contains two small pots and a mini extruder, then added a couple of cutters and a lollipop stick. 

Small jigsaws - we had a few that were given out in restaurants etc., you need little jigsaws that have small pieces but not too many - something like these mini jungle jigsaws  

Collage bag - glue stick, collage materials, background papers. Can be supplemented on the journey with free catalogues or leaflets if required, maybe leaflets with pictures of the places that you have been visiting. 

Colouring - a small colouring book, pack of crayons and stickers. Crayons are best as they don't make much mess and don't need sharpening like pencils.

Matching activities - I print a grid of pictures or shapes and then cut out the corresponding shapes to be glued in place over the top. I also scanned in some foam stickers and am providing the matching stickers to be stuck over the top of the scanned images for some shape matching fun.

Magnet books - try to find one with magnets that are quite large so that they don't get lost. We had this Peppa Pig: Marvellous Magnet Book which was brilliant.

Car layout and car stickers - I drew this out myself, I hope he likes it! Just draw out a simple road way picture with a few shops and houses etc. and provide car stickers to decorate it with.

Small books - there are all sorts of little mini library book sets that you can buy - we had this lovely Axel Scheffler Pocket Library. Also children's magazines, especially those with games and stickers and a toy on the front.

I hope that these ideas were helpful!

Ginny at Small Things also has some brilliant suggestions in her blog post about travelling with young children.

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