The Best Road Trip Activities for Kids, Including Fun Games and Mess-Free Crafts

Preparing for the road trip that brings you to your intended vacation is only half the battle. Once you're in the car, you'll need to think of ways to keep the kids busy. The best way to make sure your kids are entertained (and out of trouble) while on the road is to put together a travel kit including a variety of fun activities. In the kit pictured here, you'll see that we selected craft supplies, scrapbooks, a journal, and more, but feel free to build one that speaks to your own child's interests.

When it comes to road trip activities for kids, we recommend starting with a solid collection of mess-free essentials. With some versatile supplies at the ready, your kids can keep themselves busy for hours. Choose items that are safe (no sharp scissors) and tidy (no drippy white glue). A container with compartments, such as a tackle box, keeps things neat and readily accessible. Some of our other suggestions? Consider bringing origami and scrapbook papers, glue sticks, washable markers, self-adhesive gems and other stickers, pompoms, hole punches and craft punches, chenille sticks, photocopies of family snapshots, and foam shapes. With these road trip activities, kids can make pictures and collages—you could ask them to re-create something they've seen out the window along the way.

To make your trip even more seamless, bring along lap trays as work surfaces, or improvise with rimmed cookie sheets, which prevent items from rolling off. Plus, include multiples of everything. That way, if bumping or bouncing sends a sticker flying or a pom-pom onto the floor, there's another at the ready. Once you have these supplies on standby, your kids will be ready to craft. Ahead, discover the best road trip activities for kids.

When someone spots an animal, road sign, or other item that is shown on the game boards, she points it out to the other players, who then mark the corresponding picture on their boards. (A horse on a billboard or in a trailer is as good as one in the field.) The first person to get five pictures in a row—horizontally, vertically, or diagonally—wins.

To make a set of reusable playing boards, cut the four quadrants from our page of bingo cards, and have them laminated at a copy shop. That way, boxes can be checked off with erasable markers and then wiped clean for another use. Alternatively, you can produce one-use boards by photocopying, cutting out, and marking with pen or pencil during play.

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Put together a scrapbook as a road trip activity for kids with loose-leaf rings, and make the drive as much fun as the destination. Bring some supplies, such as a hole punch, along for the ride. Kids can draw vehicles they see on plain tags with prepunched holes and record the day's highlights on postcards from every stop, creating picture-perfect pages. Or tuck souvenirs from a multi-city trip into envelopes color-coded by town: Have your child mark each city with a sticker on a map, and add a matching sticker to the envelope.

Shop Now: Swingline Hole Punch, $5.46, amazon.com; Canson Montval Watercolor Postcards, $7, michaels.com; Recollections Value Pack Cards and Envelopes, $11, michaels.com.

For a day at the beach or a park, leave bulky gear at home and instead pack a compact, portable game board fashioned from a place mat. Stamp one side with a checkerboard and the other with a tic-tac-toe grid. When the fun is over, shake off the fabric and toss it in the bag. Before your game, go on a hunt for game pieces: Stones, shells, even larger pieces of sea glass will work—assign lighter hued pieces to one player, and darker ones to the other.

Shop Now: Mainstays Ribbed Chambray Placemat, $5.97, walmart.com; U.S. Shell Dark Shell Mix, $9, michaels.com; Trodat Printy Self Inking Stamp, $14, amazon.com.

Tiny treasures like stickers, buttons, or stamps are easier to enjoy and store when they're glued to folded pages. Measure and mark a long strip of paper or card stock with its short side matching the long side of a small box. Accordion-fold the strip and glue the first page to the inside of the box's lid and the last page to the inside of the box's bottom.

Shop Now: Loops & Threads Multicolor Button Value Pack, $15, michaels.com; Creatology Assorted Sticker by Number Craft Kit, $1, michaels.com; DCWV Double Sided Cardstock Stack, $12, joann.com.

Pack a pad of blank watercolor postcards, and kids can embellish them during the road trip to send to friends back home. Take the mats from picture frames (leave the frames at home); have your children decorate them, and use them to display vacation pictures when you return from your trip. If you're visiting friends, you can send them photographs in the frames from your time together.

Shop Now: Paper Junkie 50-Pack Blank Mailable DIY Watercolor Painting Paper Postcards, $12, target.com; Mainstays Family and Love Wood Flatwide Sentiment Tabletop Picture Frames, $13.88, walmart.com; Creatology Sea Foam Stickers, $1.49, michaels.com.

Patterned bracelets woven from embroidery floss are fun to make and to share with the whole family. Once you learn the basic technique, you and the little ones can expand your repertoire to include a range of stylish necklaces and even belts (use yarn instead of floss) during your road trip. When fashioned in sophisticated colors and luxurious strings and yarns with metallic accents, these knotted bracelets become great accessories you can wear alongside your kids, too.

A child will love a soft and sweet companion to keep them company during a road trip. Our dolls, made from little more than fabric and yarn, are full of personality. Plus, you can customize the doll by picking out the yarn for the hair with care; alpaca works for straight hair, and boucle has built-in curls. For shorter curls, embroider mohair yarn directly to head and brush slightly.

Handcrafted end pages featuring kid drawings transform basic journals into road trip keepsakes. A journal of any size will work. Measure the book's original endpaper, then cut your little crafter's picture so that it's slightly wider to accommodate the fold if need be. Next, apply a glue stick evenly over the endpaper. Lay artwork over the glued area and press, starting at the center and working out. Close the journal and stack heavy books on top. Let it dry.

Shop Now: Andrews Blaine Ltd. Bright Ideas White Leatherette Zipper Journal, $19.95, barnesandnoble.com; Artist's Loft Fundamentals Triangle Markers Set, $6, michaels.com; Bead Landing Warm Mixed Acrylic Jewels, $5, michaels.com.

Or prepare a vacation scrapbook for each child, with plastic sleeves and clear zippered pencil cases in a loose-leaf binder. Kids can start chronicling their road trip with this activity; ask them to make an opening page, to draw pictures of animals they see as you drive, or to make lists of the states seen on license plates. Or give them a map of the route to embellish—they may even keep you from missing your exit. 

Shop Now: Russell + Hazel Bookcloth Signature Three-Ring Binder in Blue and Gold, $29, bedbathbeyond.com; Baseline Sheet Protectors, $12.49, staples.com; The Container Store Small Soft Mesh Pencil Pouch, $1.79, containerstore.com.

On bus or train trips, during wedding ceremonies, or whenever silence is required, keep your child entertained with a homemade felt activity book. You can personalize this quiet book depending on the time of year, too. Pages for spring, summer, fall, and winter reflect the tones and activities of the season. On each season's page, a pocket contains a collection of felt shapes that a child can button on and off to modify the scene.

Summer reading lists can be daunting even for avid readers, but turning the list into a game will make this task more enjoyable. Bring this game and the books with you as road trip activities for kids, and you'll kill two worms with one stone. Another perk? It's easy to piece together. Drawing a worm on a large piece of card stock will make for the perfect game board.

Shop Now: Astrobrights Neenah Cardstock, $6.29, target.com; Crayola Assorted Colored Pencils, $6.65, target.com; Recollections Summer Stickers, $1, michaels.com.