BEST Tips for Peaceful Road Trips with Preschoolers

We love visiting friends and family, so we travel quite frequently in the car. Here, I am breaking down some of my BEST travel tips for preschool aged kids. We used these tips for over a road trip of 18 hours roundtrip and all had a very enjoyable ride, so trust me these definitely help!

Best tip: Keep screen time for breaking point time. If you get anything from this post, please use this tip! We aren’t big on screen time in our family and it totally pays off when being in the car. We have an iPad on standby for our boys, but only use it when they get antsy and are starting to get tired of being in the car.

Travel with toddlers is tough so this advice is golden!

Tips for Road Trips:

Lots of snacks and water. I cannot tell you the amount of snacks that I travel with, but it is a lot. I now travel with a gallon sized bag filled with sweet and healthy treats for my boys (and grown boy!). Drew is a neat freak so I try and keep the snacks to easy to eat items. Some of our go toos: z-bars, raisins, fruit snacks (but limit based on sugar), apple sauce pouches (watch them carefully!), goldfish or individual bags of chips, banana chips, nuts and of course a lot of water (we use leak proof bottles).
Coloring and Activity books. I love Melissa and Doug for their road trip friendly toys. My boys always love doing the water color or the magic color boards. These keep my boys occupied for a little bit which is golden!
LCD board or Magnetic Letter Board. I keep an LCD board and etchasketch board in my car at all times. I recently purchased a Magnatab board on Prime Day and the boys loved it. It kept both of them occupied for a while which was a win in my book.
Mr. Buckle. This is a little toy that is a huge hit with my youngest, he loves working on fine motor skills and loves buckles. This keeps his hands busy for quite sometime. Please note my oldest isn’t as into it, but every child is different!
Pop-Its. These are everywhere these days and for good reason, they keep kids occupied. I picked up a couple from TJMaxx but you can find them practically anywhere!
McDonald’s. For long road trips we always stop at “Old McDonald’s.” It is a big treat for my boys and I know that they will actually eat their burgers. Bonus: burgers are pretty self contained so not bad for clean up. We only stop at McDonalds or Chick-fil-a if we are on the road for longer than 5 hours or so (I usually pack enough snacks for shorter trips!).
Books for kids. I love the little books with pictures and my oldest has started getting into bigger books. My trick, the more pictures the better. My boys love looking through pictures and “reading” as we travel.
Knock, knock jokes and I spy. These are two games that my boys love to play in the car. We play “I spy” and tell knock, knock jokes in the car (admittedly, their jokes don’t make sense but we all enjoy laughing along with them!).
iPad or Tablet with downloaded shows. As noted above, we keep an iPad on standby. I have a stand for my iPad that I set on the center console and play for the boys. We have messed with headphones and separate tablets, but this system works the best for us. I make sure to download plenty of shows from Amazon and Netflix before road trips (just in case!).