How to Keep Your Kids Entertained for Hours!: Our Road Trip Essentials

Our kids have become road trip experts at 7, 7, and 10 years of age. They’ve been going on long car trips for as long as they can remember. Our standard road trips are about 7 hours long, but they’ve spent as much as 12 hours in the car.

Since they were about 4, they have been responsible for packing their own “Adventure Bags”. Adventure bags are backpacks full of things to keep them occupied while they’re being chauffeured around the country. Here are our kids favorite things to pack for a road trip.

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Smiley's Travel Essentials

Now that our daughter Smiley is 11, her adventure bag looks a little different than it did when she was younger. Before she was all about drawing and coloring while we were in the car, now she’s more into playing games.

Here are our daughter’s road trip essentials:

Nintendo Switch
Road Trip Trivia
Guess in 10
Car Backseat Organizer
Origami Puzzle Game
On the Go Games
Travel Pillow
Smartest in the Car
Kanoodle

The Boys Travel Essentials

The twins are now 7 and are at the age where they are obsessed with video games, but they can also still entertain themselves with things like Wikki Stix, magnetic tiles, and cars.

Here are our boys road trip essentials:

Nintendo Switch
Doodle Tablets
Wikki Stix
Car Bingo
Mini Magnetic Tiles
Magnetic Men

Our Road Trip Playlist

It wouldn’t be a proper road trip without a bangin’ playlist. Head on over to Spotify to listen to our Road Trip Playlist. The playlist is full of some of our favorite jams and road trip classics.

You’ll hear everything from Jellyroll and Fall Out Boy to Taylor Swift and Queen. There’s a little something for everybody.

When we go on trips, we sprinkle in songs that mention the places on our itinerary.