Ahhh, the dreaded question no parent wants to hear while travelling. Here’s a few ‘Surviving Road Trip’ tips to help you get through the tough times…
Tip #1: ‘Plate Poetry’
Get the kids to make up a story or poem using the first letter of every number plate they see as the first letter of each word. They can write these down (or if that tends to turn them a little green in the gills they can just say their story out loud as the cars are going past). Hopefully they’ll be so distracted looking for oncoming traffic that they forget how far you’ve still got to go…
Tip #2: ‘Road Trip Scavenger Hunt’
Make up a travelling scavenger hunt and see who finds everything first e.g. red letterbox, yellow car, 2 horses, truck and trailer, speed sign, road name starting with W. You can make it as long or short, and as hard or easy as you like, depending on how long you’ve got to go!
Tip #3: ‘My town is famous for…’
So, we all remember as kids travelling through towns with giant shearers (Te Kuiti) or fizzy drink bottles (Paeroa) or carrots (Ohakune)… so, the game is, if you had your own town, what would you be famous for and what giant symbol would you have on your main street? Give the kids a few minutes to think about this and then see who can be the most creative. How about a town famous for a Jenga-making factory, with a stack of Jenga blocks 100m high that you can climb up? Or a town famous for bike riding, with a bike statue so big the wheels are actually giant ferris wheels? Or a town famous for making computers, with a giant laptop where you can jump on the keys and make different images appear on the screen….
If you have others, we’d love you to contact us and share your ideas, so we can help other parents get through the tough times too.