Hi,

We are going on holiday involving a long car journey very soon and I want my children to be happy in the car so that I don't go .

What would you recommend as the best car activity to keep children happy in the back of a car?

Thx

My son suffers from travel sickness so we are restricted to what we can give him on long car journeys. Books, colouring, puzzles etc is a no no, so we stick to eye-spy when stuck in a traffic jam, or his dvd player with some favourite films always goes down well. Or we make up silly observation type games.

However, Sainsburys are currently selling small white-boards together with pen for £2.99. They are on buy one get one free at the moment. I bought a couple today and we spent an enjoyable couple of hours this evening playing noughts & crosses, squares and hang-man on it. Great for kids as they can draw & doodle to their hearts content and wipe it all off when finished.

I have a word bag for my daughter. When she learn new words at school, I copy them into a piece of paper and cut them out to small cubic, put them all in a bag. Then we can play a game where we take turns pick a word and make a sentence.

This word bag can be use anywhere you go, and is a good way to help the kids remember what they learn at school.

I'm afraid on long journeys the in car dvds come out. It keeps them happy and the journey stress free.

I must admit, we use DVDs a lot, I have found this helps to prevent car sickness. We have got a travel version of Guess Who, which also works well, and Top Trumps games seem to do the trick for a while. I also pack a little rucksack for my two children before we set off. I put little snacks and treats in different pockets of the rucksacks for them to find and little toys and games and magazines that they haven't seen for a while.

if you've got an ipad, you can buy lots of different games via apps which might work well. we were recommended "Monkey Pre-school Lunchbox" for my 2 year old and on a recent family holiday, both her and her 3 year old cousin really enjoyed it. it's educational and didn't take them long to work out for themselves how to use it, hence it was a real hit on the car journey.

Eye spy is fun - a different one is only finding something which begins with your childs' first letter of her name; i.e. only find Ms if her name is Megan, etc. The other great game in the car is YELLOW CAR NO RETURN. There aren't that many yellow cars and if you spot one, you gain a point, the other travellers can't take your point - we only see about 30 going down to Devon! Plus SPOT THE WORKMEN WORKING is another fun game whilst driving especially on the M1 with all the roadworks - so many workmen don't do much - see if your kids can spot them working - cementing, drilling, putting cones out, etc, not smoking or chatting / and drinking cups of tea!!