The kind people use when biking. Fill with juice or other liquid and freeze ahead of time. Cold juice will be ready when they are. They don’t spill, unlike juice boxes that spurt juice everytime they are squeezed or when one attempts to put the little straw down the little %*&$^ hole in the thing. They will make your time in the car much, much cleaner.
When my kids were little, they enjoyed kids’ sing-along tapes. I particularly remember one that featured “The Ants Go Marching” If your kids are like mine, they’ll enjoy singing along for hours. If you are like me, your ears will be bleeding by the time the trip is half over.
Heh. We used to take 26-hr car trips several times a year. My mom would give us all Dramamine “just in case”. And then smile beatifically at us while we nodded off and slept for most of the trip.
Other than that, reading a book out loud was our next best option. We also played travel games (like magnetic checkers) and road bingo.
Books on tape/CD work great for my children, but they are older (7 and 9). We recently had two eight-hour bus trips in one weekend. We bought a couple of those newfangled MP3-player-things that young people use and filled them with a new book, some old books and stories, and some music.
It might be something to try for your oldest, but in that case, try to get time to let him listen to at least one book first, or chcoose a book which you’ve read for him previously. In my experience (with a sample size of two) younger children tend to prefer familiar stories, and can listen to the same story again and again and again and…
My wife’s system was to follow the advice of several peole above and have a bunch of little activity games or toys or sketchbooks and only dole them out one at a time. Her trick was to wrap them up like presents so the kids didn’t know what they were… there was just this shopping bag full of presents… and they had to be quiet for a while before they’d get to open one…
Checklists; get clipboards and draw little pictures of vehicles, animals, post boxes, electricity pylons, barns, windmills etc - any landmark that you might concievably pass; get the kids to check or tally them off when they see them.
and filled them with a new book, some old books and stories, and some music.