So, did I mention that I’m a serial over-planner and over-the-top organiser?! On the longer driving days, keeping the kids sufficiently occupied is a MUST, so I make no apologies for having completely over-done it on this front…
With the help of my favourite armouries, the local $2 shop, Kmart and The Warehouse, I made the kids a busy bag each, full of activities for on the road and boredom busting, without breaking the bank.
The trick here is to not show all your cards at once! Each day I put one or two new things in their individual bags to keep it exciting - otherwise they blasted through the lot of it in the first hour and it was all old hat.
Ideas for in your busy bags
Colouring pages
Check out the Crayola website, you can find free printables of their favourite cartoon characters and everything kids love! It’s also worth searching on Pinterest for free colouring pages for kids, or hit your local $2 shop for colouring books, join the dot books, and colour by number activity books. Colouring pencils are a good option, but just beware of crayons which can melt in a hot motorhome.
Magic Pen Colouring pages
These are great no-mess options for the younger kids (especially if you’re worried that one of them might just draw on something they shouldn’t!). These can be found at places like The Warehouse or stationery shops.
Stickers
Stickers are always a winner with kids - check out your local $2 shop. If you get a small artists pad as well, they can stick them on the pages and draw scenes around the stickers. Having a pad rather than loose leaves of paper helps keep things together for both stickers and drawing alike.
Party Favours
If you look in the party favour section of Kmart or The Warehouse, you can find some real gems! I found things like a slinky, a basketball hoop shoot game, silly putty, pinball games, little insects or dinosaur toys. Just be aware that small stuff does tend to end up all over the floor so is best avoided, and you don’t want anything sharp or too tiny for their age-group that they might choke on! I had trouble trying to get the boys to put everything back in their busy bags and keep their areas tidy, so you could use little tote boxes with handles that can sit beside their seats on a piece of non-slip mat (both items can be found at a $2 shop or supermarket.)
Wikki Stix
These are pieces of waxy string that can used to make all sorts of shapes, and mould and sculpt with. They can be found on Amazon and other places but you can also make them yourselves by keeping the red wax off Baby Belle cheese, gently melting it in a tin on the stove, dipping lengths of cotton string in and pulling them out with tweezers, then laying them out to set on a piece of baking paper. Just be careful not to get the hot wax on you! They actually work quite well, and if you Google it, there are all sorts of things kids can do with them.
Books
I went to a local book sale a got a whole lot of small books for very cheap, that weren’t too bulky, perfect for traveling. If they’re not your prized favourites from home, it won’t matter if they get a bit worn, or even given away at the end! Theses were handy for the boys to look at going along, and for bedtime stories.
Scratch notes/pages
Kids love these! They can doodle away to their hearts content. Found at most book or craft shops.
Compendium/ Hard case
I got one each for the boys to store their colouring books and stickers and pencils in, but they also doubled as a good hard surface to draw on. I got these from the $2 shop, but any stationery shop should have them too.
Travel games/activities
Audiobooks and kids songs
We used Spotify for songs, podcasts and kids stories. I already had their favourites in playlists, so all I had to do was download them into my phone before we left home. I highly recommend doing this so you don’t chew through too much data, but also because some places around New Zealand are still black holes when it comes to cell coverage. Good places to start are Beatrix Potter stories told by Vivien Leigh, Pippi Longstocking, Dr. Seuss stories, Disney stories, Finding Nemo, Fox and Hound, Fairy tales, The Jungle Book, Toy Story, Lady and the Tramp, Paw Patrol Stories, Winne the Pooh, Peppa Pig songs and stories, just to name a few!
Horse
We had a never-ending game of Horse on the go for the whole trip. You get one point on your tally for every horse you spot by yelling Horse! and if you spot a horse float/trailer you yell Horse Robber! and steal everyone else’s horses. The boys really got into it. We kept it pretty simple for their age group, but you can also have Dead Horse, when you spot a Cross or anything to do with death (e.g. cemetery or a church) and everyone else loses their horses but you, and there is also White Horse, which if spotted, gets you 10 points.
Car cricket
There are many variations of this, but this is one of the easiest for young kids. Each person has a turn at having an innings in which their score is kept. They get one run for every car that goes past, 4 runs for a campervan, and 6 runs for big trucks, but if a red car goes past, they are out, and it’s the next persons innings.
Old cell phones
Depending on the age of your kids, old cell phones are brilliant! You can load them with Spotify and their favourite songs and stories, give them some kids headphones (that are volume limited), and they are happily in control of their own listening. This is particularly good if saved for nearing the end of a long busy day where melt-downs are only a hair’s breadth away. You can also load them with ad-less kids educational apps that you feel comfortable with, such as letter and number or puzzle games. Search ‘Adless kids games’ on your app store, because often you can pay only a few dollars and get rid of the ads, which saves your kids from accidently clicking on something dodgy, and them having to get you to fix it all the time when ads pop up. The great thing is that if you don’t have a cell card in it, they can’t connect to anything, making them safe for your kids.
DVDs
Our motorhome had a DVD player down the back, so I brought a few kids DVDs with me (I put several in the same box to save space). I also brought a few movies on a hard drive. These were great for those evenings when the kids were dog-tired and just needed a wind down before bed.
Scavenger hunt printable
You can find heaps of these available online. I used their ideas and added to them to make my own NZ specific hunt. Things like boiling mud, Pohutukawa trees, a Tui, a police car… you get the picture! For the younger kids who can’t read yet, you can have a photo of the item to find.
Group stories
Each person tells a part of a story then passes it to the next person to continue…a few phrases each. See where the kids’ imaginations take the story! This can keep the kids busy for a fair while and is quite entertaining for all!
Kids travel journaling – if your kids are too young to write, get them a small drawing pad from a $2 shop and a packet of pencils – each night they can draw pictures of things they have seen. You may need to help them label the pictures they draw so they remember what they were. Pick up an extra map just for the kids (AA and info centers have free ones) and help them mark on the map where you have been that day and where you are staying. They can also take their own photos on their old cell phones as they travel around, depending on their ages. Pick up brochures as you go, stick then in a big ziplock bag, and when they get home, they can have some fun cutting out pictures of things they’ve seen and sticking them in a scrapbook, along with any tickets or other trinkets they save from the trip, and the photos they took themselves. This is a nice wind-down before bedtime family activity.
Kids Snacks
I kept a stash of snacks next to me in the front of the van that I could hand back when needed. I had snack ziplock bags or little containers made up in the morning all ready to go – things like crackers, raisins, fruit, and dried fruit pieces. Other less healthy options are animal biscuits, snack packs of chips, fruit strings, lollies and tiny teddies, and rice crackers. Most days we found an ice block somewhere along the line – so not healthy, but hey, it’s holidays!
You can use a treat as a ‘carrot’ to dangle for good behaviour for the day – if they have been reasonably well-behaved until 3pm, they could get an ice block or other treat of your choice! Bribery and corruption, I know, but we are all here to have a holiday right?!
Kids backpacks ready to go
It’s quite a good idea to have little backpacks for each kid close handy, ready to go for the day – rain jacket, water bottle, sunhat etc. Then if you stop somewhere, you can jump out and go explore, rather than have to send out the search party for all their bits and bobs. It’s also handy for the adults to have a daypack ready to go with wallet, water and hats etc.
Drive times
It really depends on the age and capabilities of your kids as to how much they can handle each day, but we found it would have been very easy to overdo the driving. If you spend too much time on the road, you don’t have enough time to really experience a place, play on the beaches or find cool playgrounds along the way. Make sure you leave plenty of time for exploring and playing and just being in a place, rather than travelling through!
So bottom line – yes, it IS very doable to travel with kids in a motorhome! Expect a bit of disruption and shenanigans as par for the course, hope like hang it will pass, and be prepared to intervene with lots of distractions. It’s totally worth it for the amazing family time you’ll have and memories you’ll share forever!
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