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17 Comments

  1. Pierce and Carter's mom says:

    I have an almost 3 year old and a just turned 4 year old. We travel at least 2 hours each way nearly every weekend, and they LOVE utheir Tag systems. They (mostly) share the books, and have learned quite a bit from those things. When they eventually tire of Tag (when we are almost to pur destination), they will go ahead and color or very seldomly usey phone. We really try hard not to give them the phone. I live your car game! Thank you!

    1. So glad to hear you like the game! Hopefully your kids will enjoy it for your next road trip. :-)

  2. Lily's Mom says:

    Do you have any recommendations for a 16 months old who absolutely HATES being in the car. I have the same trouble of her screaming non-stop on road trips. She did it last summer as a 4 month old too. We took a 5 hour trip last week and it was so terrible my stomach was in my mouth :/ We have an 18 hour road trip in 2 weeks. We try driving over night, but she still ends up waking up from a bump in the road and just screaming. What helped your Bailey relax?

    1. Oh, mama. I feel for you! A few things that come to mind…

      1. Through trial and error, we found a handful of songs that calmed Bailey down. Those are listed here: https://happyyouhappyfamily.com/2013/10/how-to-calm-crying-baby/

      We would play those on repeat, and it would help her calm down for sleep and stay asleep MUCH longer than without the songs on.

      2. Another thing we found that would help is me being in the backseat with her, basically hugging her when she was freaking out. So if she were crying and we knew she was sleepy, I would get in the back and hug her, and we would play the songs until she fell asleep. It sucked being squished in the back seat between two car seats, but I think we saved everyone’s sanity by decreasing the screaming as much as possible!

      3. I’ve heard it helps some babies to have white noise playing in the car. You can get a white noise app to do this. The one we use is listed here (#3): https://happyyouhappyfamily.com/2013/07/8-newborn-must-haves/

      4. We also noticed at night-time she would freak out even more. So we got a carseat mirror with a light and music feature. (We stopped at a Babies R Us halfway between Michigan and Austin at about 7:30 pm to pick that up, we were desperate!)

      5. On another long trip, we stopped at Babies R Us to pick up a stack of board books. We read those to her in a happy voice – one after the other – and that helped too.

      I hope I’ve given you some ideas to go on…good luck on your trip!

    1. White!

      After the experiment, I did a quick Google search to find out what the actual most popular car color is…and it’s white. :-) So then we had a cool conversation about what if it wasn’t actually white, what would that mean, etc. It led to talking about sample sizes and biased experiments, and more. Fun stuff for our geeky little family. :-)

      1. So. Effin. Cool.

        And so effin cool that you’ve actually become a Writer with a Blog that people Read. I remember when we dreamed of that. Rock on.

        1. Aw…*blush*

          You know what’s cooler? Getting the Brennarella stamp of approval. :-D

    1. Skye, you are too sweet! Thank you for pinning this little road trip experiment. :-) I see you’re from Austin too! So fun to connect with another local mama. I just followed you on Twitter and Instagram. Off to check out your site!

  3. What a wonderful idea! Such a great way to tie in prediction and results for science – genius! And love the printable (thank you :). We’re using this on our trip to Chicago!

    1. Jacquie, oh I’m so happy to hear you used it on your road trip! We actually went to Chicago on this road trip too. :-)

      I hope you had a great family trip and that the experiment provided at least a little quiet time!

  4. Christina says:

    So clever and my 7 year old aspiring scientist will LOVE this. Saving it for those moments when the beloved iPad just won’t do anymore. Thank you!!

    1. Christina, I love that your 7-year-old is an aspiring scientist already! I think Abby and your little one would get along very well. :-) Enjoy it on your next road trip!

  5. I LOVE this!! Thank you so much for creating and sharing this! I have seen similar printables of check off sheets, but you actually made this into a usable lesson! My son is going to love it!

  6. This looks fabulous! We take car trips all the time with our 4 children (now 7, 9, 10, & 11) and we do limit screen time even on vacation. For long vacations we prepare binders ahead of time with maps for each state through which we’ll travel, coloring sheets, and games to play. (Your kids might be getting old enough for car Battleship!) I just printed eight of your activities so our kids can to one on the way to Florida, and another on the way home. Finger knitting and loom weaving are great options if your kids can keep the supplies relatively neat.