Peter helped me make these photo flip books at Kinkos late into the evening the night before we left on our Utah trip. They were to be my secret weapon to keep the younger ones happy since we don't have a DVD player to fall back on, and although music and talking books work our CD player only works when it is jabbed just right with a steak knife. We made five books.
I pulled them out on multiple occasions and found they even entertained the older kids. They discovered they could play "I Spy" with them. For example.....I spy lots of dirty dishes in the sink, I spy a band aid on someone's arm or I spy a lego piece under the couch. It bought us some quiet miles.
The only problem I had was Henry figured out how to open the ring that held the book together so that became more fun than actually looking at the photos.......at least he was entertained and the mess was easy enough to pick up.
Other ideas that helped entertain the kids on this past adventure in the car: Tuskies, the large elephant puppet or Brentwood the stuffed bear (Paul was a lot better at bringing these characters to life and was able to do it one handed over his shoulder from the front - it even got me laughing), sturdy Waldorf sketch pads, finding shapes in the clouds (yes we got desperate at times), a Hymn book and Children's Song book, and guess the year of the coin I just pulled out of the spare change pile.
We've been on enough road trips to learn that it doesn't take bags of treats, piles of movies or fancy toys to entertain kids, in fact in most cases those have all backfired on us. Instead it is just the joy of being together that gets us through the long journeys and in some cases it is actually the journey itself that makes the trip most memorable. So when the sun is in our eyes and more than half the van is screaming with impatience Paul and I just look at each other and chuckle out the following assurances: "we're suppose to be having fun, right"? and "this is what vacation is suppose to feel like" because laughter is what helps more than anything when you are on a long road trip with children as I suppose it is with raising a family in general.
I've made these for my kids as well and the babies love them. I also love driving with my kids in the car. We don't have a built in DVD player and most of the time my kids just like playing games or staring out the windows. It isn't always a good time, but I do have to say that some of my happiest times over the past 7 years have been with just our little family on the road together.
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