Traveling with the Herd

We even have "jam sessions" sometimes. Uncle Scott is on the dulcimer.

We LOVE road trips!! And since our trips are epic, we have had to come up with lots of ways to constructively, happily, peacefully, pass the time with lots of kids and usually multiple vehicles. It's a logistical challenge to say the least. 

We try not to "let it all hang out" until we are ready to leave a campground. Don't want to scare the "locals."

Another blog I read was asking for suggestions for traveling with children and I just got excited remembering all the fun things we have done on our journeys. So I thought I would force you to read about them so that I can remind myself of those golden days of exploring our amazing nation. Oh, and also so I can make a packing list for our upcoming adventure.

This was at an amazing aquarium we visited.

As homeschoolers, we are constantly looking for ways to help our kids practice a love of learning. Not that that pursuit is exclusive to homeschoolers, but it is just always on our radar because that IS MY LIFE! I am not hyperventilating, in case you were wondering. 

"The best laid schemes o' mice an' men", you know. Even the best planning can't prepare for every contingency.

Here is a list of things we have done on our trips, in no particular order, other than how they tumble out of my feverish brain:

• I make a master notebook that contains info pertaining to the places we will pass on our route. It includes our reservations for campgrounds, info about historical places we will pass, hours/prices/online coupons preprinted for admissions to museums, zoos, gardens, etc. I include lots of optionals so that we have choices wherever we are.
• Notebooks for the kids that contain info about each state we will pass through. There are all kinds of puzzles, coloring pages, etc. about the state bird or plant or historical points of interest. 
• We take lots of field guides and binoculars so we can identify what we see and then record it in a notebook. You can have sections on birds, mammals, trees, flowers, etc.
• We have, over the years and the miles, collected lots of wonderful travel games. We look for self contained games, often with only one or two players. Many of them from one of my favorite places: Timberdoodle
• We have always looked for all 50 license plates and usually keep a master list in one of the vehicles. But I recently found a great alternative that I quickly snatched up and purchased before anyone else could get it. 
• We use our comb binding machine to make travel journals so the kids write about our adventures. I usually have them write about what happened, what we saw or did, where we went from the day before. They love to add illustrations. Well, some of them do. Some of them treat the assignment like it's a death sentence and just want to get it over with. But it is amazing how much even these reluctant participants love to read their travel journals months after we are home. They make great keepsakes.
• There's a great book series called The Roadside Geology of ________. They make them for different states. The book is arranged by roads so that you can look up which road you are on to be able to read about what you are seeing at mile marker whatever. It is a very detailed book, but you can simply scan the information and hit the high points.
• There's also a book series that covers the historical markers. It's called Why Stop? I'm always curious about them, but it isn't always convenient to stop and read each one. It, too, is arranged very logically so that you can read about the historical event as you are driving past. Great references. 
• We always take lots of wonderful reading material and each of the kids spends a certain, age appropriate amount of time reading on our driving days or before "lights out." Now we have jumped into ereaders and will be taking them all with us this summer.  Have "big" kids read stories to "little" ones. 
• A good idea for little ones is hand puppets. Have the bigger kids take turns sitting beside a carseat child. They can put on puppet shows and tell stories to the little ones. This help can be "rewarded", as mentioned later in this list.
• We take a couple of really great read alouds that I read in the travel trailer or around the campfire at night before bed. It's so much fun to all curl up in blankets and listen to a great story. Since we usually travel with lots of cousins, there is a large crowd and it's one of our favorite parts of each trip.
• Of course, we take our Bibles and spend time in the Word on a regular basis.
• Another thing we like to take are crafts that can be worked on in the car. Things like origami, or crochet, or small hand-sewing projects, braiding lanyards, etc.
• When the kids were little, I had two little jars with screw-on lids (preferably plastic ones) and some bright colored beads or beans. I would use them to help the kids visualize "how much longer" our drive was each day. I would set a value for each bead and put that number of beads in the "How Much Farther Jar". For example, if each bead equaled 50 miles and we were driving 400 miles that day, the first jar would get 8 beads. Then as we traveled 50 miles we would move one bead into the other jar, the "How Far We Have Come" one. It really cut down on the impatience. You can adjust the value up or down depending on the age of your kids. You can even have a "Total Trip" set of jars.
• Since we are usually in multiple vehicles (the truck has to pull the trailer, but it won't hold all the kids so we also take the Suburban), we bring along two-way radios. They are great for communicating between vehicles, especially in remote areas where cell coverage is spotty. We use them for games of Hinky Pinky between vehicles, or we have been known to have a contest between vehicles in composing new verses for old familiar songs. It helps if they are silly songs.
• We have several ipods/mp3 players that I have loaded wonderful music and audio books on from another great place: Blue Behemoth
• Another thing we have invested in over the years are cameras. We love to give each child a little point and shoot camera that they can use to record their trip on. Then we can add those pictures to their travel journals.
• Another great activity for whiling away the hours is memory work. You can make little index cards with their Scripture memorization or poems they are learning and punch a hole in the corner of each card, then put them on a metal ring. These are great for traveling!
• We often take some flower/plant presses so we can preserve some of the lovely things we see. Just remember not to collect anything in National Parks, etc. where it is restricted.
• Another great motivator if you have ones that aren't great travelers is to establish a award system for behavior. You can set it up as a daily thing, a weekly thing, or for the entire trip. Stickers can be placed on a chart for "Most Cheerful", "Most Helpful", "Best Wildlife Spotter", etc. These little awards could be in a notebook for the entire family, or you could make places for them in their travel journal.
• Bringing along multiple travel atlases is a great way to practice map skills. You can have the kids calculate the distance you plan to travel in a day and they can keep a travel log with a running total of your distance. You can also incorporate the cost for mile if you have older kids. They will learn how the terrain affects the mileage, and how the two different vehicles get different mileage. You can also add in all kids of variables so that they could compute the total cost of your trip per mile, including food, lodging, admissions, etc. 
• We love to sing, so take along lots of "sing-a-long" options. That can be one of the best ways to settle them down or distract the young ones. If the whole family is belting out a goofy song together, it's hard to stay grumpy for long. When things get really rough, we roll the windows down and the passengers occupying window seats work with their seatmate to "flap their wings" in unison out the windows. We are advanced wing flappers and so we alternate upward and downward strokes between front and back seat people. It's great for making the other vehicle laugh--we pull in front of the other vehicle, roll down our windows and start flapping. I dare you not to laugh. 
• We take lots of puzzle books like Sudoku, mazes, word searches, etc., along with mechanical pencils.
• The other HUGE thing you must include in your planning is this: expect the unexpected and figure flexibility into each day. It's those days with no "margins" that raise everyone's blood pressure to the boiling point. So just relax. Go with the flow. Enjoy every moment as a gift!! :)

Caleb confiscated my camera on this trip

Okay, that's probably enough for now. Can you tell, I really get into this stuff? I just love to "enrich" our time together, especially when it could so easily be considered "lost" time. No matter how much you plan, traveling is still hard. And there will be times when you just have pray through a tough patch. But the better I have planned, the fewer tough patches we have. When it comes down to it, traveling together reveals character. That can be a good thing or a bad thing. But, either way, there are so many teaching moments when you cram your family in a vehicle or two and take off for a several-thousand-mile-adventure. We wouldn't trade for our time spent traveling together "en masse." You just miss so much if you don't drive on some of your trips. There are so many wonderful treasures to be found "as you are going along."

It is always good to make it home again. Yes, they are kissing the ground.

Hope these are helpful. Let me know what you do. What have we left out? We would love to try some new things on our next journey!