Traveling with Young Children

  Traveling to family gatherings can be stressful, or it can be fun.  Snacks, drinks, a favorite blanket, drawing materials, books, storytelling, and games keep the family happy while riding along. 

What To Do:

  Young children love to hear about family member’s childhood.  It is their first exposure to history and stories of people they love.   Most important these tales are passed on and not lost.

  Think of some lessons of kindness, perseverance, courage and triumph over difficulty. Perhaps your grandparents told you some funny or scary stories you vividly remember.  Retelling the story with exaggerations, descriptions, and sound effects will make it come alive for your children, too. When you reach your  destination, children will rush in and tell all about what they heard on the way.

   Children can play Tic Tac Toe and Dots game with a hardcover book for a desk. To play Dots make ten rows and columns of dots equally spaced. Each player has one turn to connect two dots.  The object is to connect dots to enclose a square, put your initial inside, and earn another turn. The player with the most squares wins. Preschool children catch on to these two games quickly.

  You’re about an hour into the trip.  Now what? Take a few verbal games out of your bag of tricks.  One game is called “What Do You Know?”  The adult asks simple questions and children take turns giving their answers.  Questions are based on children’s age, interest, and vocabulary.  For example for the younger child, “How many colors do you know?  What foods are red? What do we call people who take care of us when we get sick?”

  For older children the questions could be related to geography or history. “How many states begin with the word New?  Now many bird names can you remember?

Can you name a holiday for each month?” 

   Another car game is called “I just saw it.” One person begins having noticed something just passed—for instance, a telephone pole. “ It was tall and thin. I just saw it.”  The others begin to guess.  If they fail, the person adds more clues until the object is guessed.

 “Colors” is played by naming a common color.  When two things are found you take turns switching to another color.

  How does this Help My Children?

  A recent study compared the vocabulary of children entering kindergarten from the 1950’s and 2009. It found that children in the 1950’s had DOUBLE the vocabulary entering school.  Family games and conversation help build vocabulary used for reading and success in school.

For more ideas about traveling with children go to our previous blog: Are We There Yet? and also check out our WNMU Learning Through the Seasons podcast about traveling. For more ideas check out the authors’ book “Learning Through the Seasons.” 

Illustration: Mark Nowicki
Photo: Photo: Norman, Steve. nat143.jpg. . Pics4Learning. 22 Dec 2012