Use time in the car to educate your small kids, and prepare them for school!
Car trips are the bane of some parent’s existence. Keeping kids entertained for hours on end as you travel to see family or go on vacation is not for the weak of heart. Despite my kids’ propensity to fight with each other, ask for snacks, and whine about how “long” our journey is, I have some awesome strategies for using all that car-time to further my kids’ educations!
Here are three vehicle-based ideas to try with different ages of children!
Babies and Toddlers: Counting, ABC’s, and Nursery Rhymes
Counting is magical! When I start counting is when my kids take me most seriously. I don’t know why, we’ve never set a rule or anything, but there is something about counting that causes kids to jump to action. I know this is true for many other parents as well. It is like a secret parent superpower!
Counting can be useful in the car before kids even get to an age where they know what the counting means.
When my son was young and he would start crying, I would start counting (even before he could talk), and I would keep counting until he stopped crying. On many occasions, I got to 100 several times before he eventually stopped wailing, and sometimes I got all the way home still counting all the way. Note: This is not a strategy for calming a child down, but many times it did eventually get there. I chalk it up to my soothing counting voice, but who knows. If I’m being completely honest, counting was more a strategy for calming me down and make me feel like I was being productive with the moment.
Many parents feel helpless when they can’t calm kids (especially babies) down in the car when they also have to focus on driving, but counting gives us something to do, that allows our kids to hear our voices, AND it makes us feel as if I was turning a negative into a positive.
Eventually, kids may even start counting with you. Mine did!
Songs like the ABC’s or other common nursery rhymes do the same thing. It is something you can repeat over and over, which can be calming for all involved, and the repetition can help prepare even the littlest of minds for future educational endeavors.
Toddlers 2-3-years-old: Well-Chosen Educational Videos
DVD players in vehicles have become common practice, and that doesn’t have to be a bad thing!
Videos in the car can be great for giving kids something to focus on. I don’t always like my kids to spend their time watching movies or shows, but on a long trip they can be very useful. It is also an opportunity to give them a little learning.
I don’t let my kids just watch any movie. I curate our in-route videos very carefully. Videos like Blue’s Clues, Umizoomi, or Sesame Street can teach kids a lot of new skills. Umizoomi focuses on math concepts, Blue’s Clues covers letters, numbers, and problem solving, and Sesame Street covers all the above along with coping strategies and other real-world skills for kids.
One great thing (among many) about little kids especially is that they don’t need lots of videos. If yours are anything like mine, they will watch the same videos over and over, and repetition is key to learning! By the time they have watched that Umizoomi episode the tenth time, even the littlest kids will start to repeat the numbers, shapes, and colors.
School Readiness for 4-6-year-olds: DIY Resource Travel Books
Personally, I try to keep technology devices (phones and tablets) out of my kid’s hands as much as possible (there is plenty of time for that technology later), so I find that I am always looking for paper-based resources to use in the car that also help my kids work on math and reading skills.
I have found that there are plenty of coloring books and travel books on sale out there that you can pick up to use on a long trip, but it has been especially hard to find one that is at the level of my child. My child is ready to do some color-by-number and trace letters, but he is not ready to do a word search, cross-word puzzle, or even read a book on his own.
For this reason, I like to make my own travel books by taking the resources that I know are at my child’s educational level, stapling them together, and giving him those to use in the car.
Here are some awesome resources that can be used to create a travel book specifically for your child’s educational readiness. Some of them also provide different levels of learning that build on each other, which is awesome as my child’s ability develops.
Counting 0 to 10
More and Less Than Number
- Counting 0 to 10
- More and Less Than a Number
- Number Sequencing Strips
- Counting Alike Coins
- NO PREP WORKSHEETS- Growing Bundle
Organizational Option: Use binders and sheet protectors to make the DIY Car Resource Books multi-use. The binder provides a hard writing surface, and the sheet protectors can be written on with a dry erase marker!
Some of my personal favorites resources from this list are the More Than/Less Than 100 (which is something I can do with my child even from the front seat of the car), the Visual Discrimination of letter worksheets which are scaffolded, so we can work through one letter at a time, and the number pattern strips, which provide several pages of different patterns he can both color on and complete.
The greatest thing about using these types of resources is that they are activities my kids can work on, interact with, and use over and over to improve and get school-ready and they don’t make any noise or require us to purchase a device to use!
Looking for some more car-ride educational must haves? Check out some of these products!
These Electronic Reader Books read the stories to kids, so if a child is truly starting to recognize words in books, or if you are looking to instill a love for reading, try out some of these. They come in a variety of different packages with about 6-10 books in each.
Melissa and Doug activity boards like this one are also a great addition to a car trip and can often just slide down next to a child’s car seat. When choosing a puzzle or activity board for the car, look for something that doesn’t have any detachable pieces (this is really important).
Lastly, if you are looking for more of a travel tray (for those especially long trips), a larger travel organizer for kids like this one may be a wonderful option as it has several pockets, a surface for activities, and a place to slide in a device like a DVD player, Ipad, or activity sheet.
Whether your child is a baby who needs to hear the sound of your voice or a 5-year-old who is prepping to go to kindergarten, this is an opportunity to get them learning even in the depths of a long road trip.
What are some educational strategies you use in the car to help prepare your kids for school? Let us know in the comments below, and check out my store on Teachers Pay Teachers for more scaffolded resources for kids!