Our 15 Favorite Road Trip Toys

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We are by no means road trippers but I would say we usually take at least two 9+ hour road trips each year. And with young kids, that is no small feat. The first few times I would pack a toy bag for each kid and hope that the entertainment would last for the majority of the drive. But I was introduced to a new method by a friend who put together a road trip basket for my kids when we were moving from North Carolina to Indiana. (If any of you have friends with kids that are moving, this was the sweetest and most helpful gesture).

The idea here is that each child gets a surprise to open every hour of the trip. That way, every hour there is a new toy to play with. You can get creative with this, and it doesn’t have to be NEW toys. You can wrap up toys that you already have. The fun in it is the surprise. The week before each trip, I do usually grab a few new things from dollar tree. Stickers, notepads, and fun pens or a roll of scotch tape can go a long way.

Below are some of the ideas we have used over the years, but I would love to hear your ideas in the comments! And if you are looking for more free printables for your road trip, you can check out my other blog post here with look and finds and ideas for quality time together in the car.

• Activity Books- Dollar Tree has the most awesome selection of these books. You can get doll dress up books, silly faces books, sticker books, and color with water books. If your kids are older, they also have things like sudoku and word searches.

• Restaurant look and find printables- We love this one, but you could always make your own or look online for others! Just a note on this: You do need to be strategic about when you pass these out. On our last trip, I passed these out and then we were in the middle of nowhere for 2 hours and didn’t pass any restaurants.

• Stickers and sticky notes will keep kids busy for a full hour. We bought two packs of stickers from dollar tree and divided them for all 3 kids. They could make tickets for each other or letters. They could pretend a sticky note is a plate and they are serving food with the food stickers. Even our two year old who doesn’t have much imagination had fun peeling off each individual sticky note.
• Modeling clay and flarp goo. The kids had a blast with the modeling clay. We divided each color into 3 and gave some of each to all of the kids. Some made basketballs, some made flowers. And the nice thing is, if you don’t get the air dry clay, they can continue to use it throughout the whole trip. We used ours again on the way back. The flarp however is something I would recommend for ages 5 and up. My 4 year old fell asleep with it in her lap and we ended up throwing the skirt she was wearing away because we couldn’t get the goo out. Everyone else handled the flarp like a champ.

• The search and finds below are some of my kids’ favorites. My grandma had these made a long time ago, but I have made a recreation here that you can print. The color cars and the I-spy with the pictures are so good for little kids. They will recognize most of the things on the sheet and it doesn’t require reading. The alphabet search is a lot better for older pre-k/kindergarten kids. My son just finished kindergarten this year and had a blast with the alphabet search. It took most of the hour as well! I usually pass all 3 of these out at the same time so they can choose what they want to do. Giving choices on road trips helps with kids being content.
• This one might not be for everyone. Our kids are fairly good listeners so when we ask them not to hit the balloon to the front, they usually listen. If your kid will throw the balloon towards the front where it could be a hazard for the driver, just alter/skip this one. I blew the balloons up for the kids and then they got to decorate them with stickers.

• Bubble wrap. I don’t think this needs explained further. I could play with bubble wrap as an adult on a trip and be very content. Note: Do NOT buy this from Dollar Tree. Theirs is too cheap and doesn’t have enough air in it to pop.
• We have a big roll of packing plastic wrap that needed used up, and thus this idea was born. I had always seen people wrap up gifts for Christmas like this and play the game where you try to unwrap as much as you can before your time runs out and you have to pass it. This is similar other than you don’t pass it. And you want it to take as long as possible. Simply choose a snack and wrap a few pieces every foot or so. Make this as large as you want it to be. My 6 and 4 year old loved this. My 2 year old liked the idea but he frequently needed help getting the plastic going to pull it off.

• Pipe cleaners and Wiki sticks. They are so fun to make designs out of. The idea is very similar, so I wouldn’t necessarily recommend both. Wiki sticks are a lot easier to mold and make more intricate designs. But pipe cleaners are better for littles and my kids love making bracelets out of them. I would also recommend printing a few idea pictures for your kids to try out! There are even a few step by step tutorial pages you could print.

• Fidget toy are a must. My kids love the stretchy tubes. Other hits would be the stretch noodles, morfs, needoh, pop its (check out this light up game), thinking putty, fidget spinners, pushpeels, fidget mazes, color memory game, Rubik’s cubes, color ball, and water-ring games are some of our favorites.
• LCD tablets. These come with us to lots of different places. We do like to bring coloring supplies and notepads but someone always ends up dropping their markers and losing the caps. These are great for drawing and for playing games like hangman with each other. I would highly recommend getting ones that have strings to attach the pen to the board.

Other ideas

• We bought these travel trays for our last trip and they were pretty nice. They did fit over our car seats, but they might not fit over every model of car seat. They were nice for holding the kids water bottles, snacks, and toys in the different compartments.
• Yoto Player or kid friendly audiobooks and playlists. You probably already know that I’m a fan of Yoto. If it isn’t in the budget, you can find many free kid audiobooks that you could listen to together in the car.
• Clipboards with coloring storage
• Indestructible books. This was a recommendation from my sister-in-law. She loves them for her kids because they are entertaining and they don’t rip. They are also somewhat waterproof and just super durable overall.
• String and fruit loops. These necklaces are one of my kids favorites. So easy and it includes a snack.

I wish you luck with your next road trip! Here is a picture of the finished product to give you an idea of what this looks like for packing. I put all of the “presents” into a box or bag to keep by my feet during the drive. We typically only pack wrapped toys for one way. The kids just play with the same toys on the way back.