Road Trip Activities for Kids: Screen-Free Games for the Car, Plane and Table

Long drives, flight days and the wait before the food arrives are easier with something new to hand over. This pack is 37 printable pages of quiet games that need nothing but crayons, so there are no cards to drop under the seat and no pieces to lose. Print what you need, slip it in a folder and hand out one page at a time.

For the car there are 6 car bingo boards (highway, in town, countryside, holiday drive, a colors and shapes board for little ones, and a word board for readers), a color-a-stop trip map and a 40-car countdown for the "are we there yet?" question, an I spy page, a road trip tally, an alphabet and number hunt, the license plate game with all 50 states, D.C., Canada and Mexico, plate games that work in any country, 12 talking games for when the paper goes away, 8 drawing prompts and a trip diary keepsake.

For eating out there are 10 restaurant placemats with mazes, word searches, tic-tac-toe, dots and boxes, a kid food critic card, a design-your-own restaurant page and a holiday table placemat, plus an answer key for grown-ups. For flying there is an airport and airplane I spy page and a flight day checklist.

Every page shows the ages it suits best, and an age-tweak page shows how to make each game easier for 3 and 4 year olds or harder for 7 and 8 year olds. A safety page covers the simple rules: the driver never plays paper games, everyone stays buckled, nothing sharp in a moving car, and no small parts for children under 3. You get three PDFs: US Letter, A4 and a low-ink version that prints in outlines.