My attempt at a smooth road trip

     In three days we're packing up our car and driving between 13-14 hours up to Canada with a 22 month old. I've been all over the internet, asked friends, searched Pinterest, and read blogs and have come up with a few ideas to HOPEFULLY help make the ride a little smoother for not only Marcus, but for us.  On typical road trips (3 hours or less) we have the usual: books, kiddie music, snacks, water, and a search out the windows for dump trucks and diggers, etc.  But I doubt that will work for the whole trip.  Here are a few inexpensive things I came up with:

I took white paper circles and cut them into two pieces.  It's hard to tell in this picture, but I outlined the matching pieces in the same color glitter glue.  This will be one of those activities that he and I do in the back seat together.  I'll take one half and ask, "does this piece match it?" and go from there.

We're just in the beginning stages of Marcus recognizing colors, but I thought this was a cute idea.  You start with one circle with four colors and then find the matching clothes pin.  Again, he won't be able to do this alone, but it'll be a great teaching time for me to not only show him how to match the colors, but what the names of each color are.  I'm not sure how to do dark blue and light blue, though.

Luckily we already had finger puppets here at the house, but I was thinking of letting him play alone with these for part of the trip, seeing if he could recognize the animals or what he'd do with them.  Then at another time, we can play together, going over the animal names and sounds (if applicable).

It is good to know home-school moms because they know all the tricks!  Sweet Mrs. Mary gave us a bag full of magnetic letters that stick onto most baking sheets.  Again, he hardly knows his letters, but it's never too soon to show & tell him about each one, sing the ABC song, and even let him play independently sticking the letters to the pan.  They work on the bottom of the pan or inside it.

Even though we travel with a plethora of books regularly, I bought two "new" books at the consignment store.  The Safari book has animal pieces that come out and can stand up.  It's also helpful because we're going to the Lion Safari once in Canada.  It's a good source to introduce those animals we never talk about like "wombats."  The book on the right is a "My First Words" book that has magnetic pieces that stick to the magnetic pages.  Not only this, but we can use them with the cooking sheet as well.

Finally, this may be old-school, but we borrowed a lap desk for Marcus to use.  It has a hard surface on one side and a detachable pillow side on the other.  I'm going to bring ten or less crayons, a coloring book from the dollar store, blank paper, and maybe a marker or two.  The less the better because knowing us, he'll drop a crayon, I'll forget about it, and it'll melt in the sun & leave a big colorful spot in our car.  So *note to self* count the crayons.

     With all that, I welcome any other comments or suggestions.  Most of the blogs I read online were ideas for OLDER children, so this was the best I could do with a not-even-two-year-old child.  We are either going to drive up over two days or drive later afternoon and into the night.  We've not yet decided.   So the more ideas I can pull out of my magic bag of tricks, the better.  Come one comment, come all! :)