Crafty Car Trip Games

Friends recently invited us on a road trip to New Orleans. They're planning some relief work - helping to rebuild a house, serving in a soup kitchen, working with the homeless. We toiled over the decision, not because we don't want to get involved but because, by definition, a road trip means actually driving...with the kids...for 24 hours. In the end, we decided to leave our youngest with grandma and take the two older kids.

Since making the decision I've been psyching myself up (or out, depending on the day) about the ride and all the things we can do and play along the way. The kids are all in various stages of learning letter, sounds and reading, so we incorporate that into our daily life as much as possible. When we go on walks or trips to the grocery store we play the Alphabet Game and try to find an item that matches each letter of the alphabet.

For the road trip, I made some laminated alphabet cards. The kids can use a crayon or dry erase marker to check off each letter as they see it on a road sign or billboard, or they can try to find objects that start with each letter. I'm sure we'll make up some more games along the way.

To make these, I used Photoshop Elements, scrapbook paper, Scotch brand Self-Laminating Document Protectors, a paper cutter and corner rounder.

 

For the back of each card, I used Retrodiva's Free Like a Bird scrapbook paper, which I found on DigitalFreebies.com. I love the little owls! The fronts have the alphabet in "Champagne & Limousines" font in coordinating colors. The dividing lines you see are "stitching" that came as part of another scrapbook kit. You could use any scrapbook paper you have available, or put another game on the back side of the card. (Wish I'd thought of that earlier.)

Each card is 5x7.5 so that I could fit two on a sheet of paper. After cutting the paper to the appropriate sizes, I use some glue dots (optional, but it really keeps the papers from sliding around) to stick the front side to the back. Trim the papers so they match in size perfectly, then round the corners. Following the directions on the self-laminating sheets, put it all together. I rounded the plastic corners too so when my kids use them as personal weapons they're less likely to lose an eye.

They turned out really well for a quick, cheap project. I'm thinking about travel bingo cards now!