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In my opinion, a one year old is the hardest age to travel in the car with. When my kids were babies, they mostly slept or batted at a toy or two while in the car. As long as we had plenty of new activities, I think we could drive for days and days before my three year old got bored. But, my 17 month old son is hard. He is too old to just sleep. He is too young for most of his sister’s toys that require the ability to not destroy or eat them. But, for our recent trip, I was able to find a few ways to make it easier to survive a road trip with a toddler.
Our road trip involved just under 30 hours in the car. Our three driving days were 8 hours, 7 hours, and 13 hours long. And believe it or not, everything went very smoothly. There is a lot of good road tripping with kids advice out there. We made sure to stop at parks along the way, let the kids sleep in the car, and kept essentials like wipes and diapers handy. But, there was still lots of time that my one year old was awake, stuck in the car, and needed entertained. If you also have an older kid, also check out what we made and brought for my three year old daughter.
How to Entertain a One Year Old in the Car:
Here are some of the things I either made or bought that my one year played with in the car. I put them in the order that we used them. You can tell that I started out with planned activities and by the end got more desperate on what he could play with. I also included a rating at the bottom of each item to show how much my son enjoyed each thing.
1. Tulle Tissue Box
The night before we left, I attached the tulle tissue box I made my son to his car seat. Once we headed out the next morning, he pretty quickly took all the tulle out. Every once in a while he would play a few minutes of peekaboo with the tulle or throw it around. But, mostly he took it all out and dumped it to the side of his car seat. Every time we stopped, I put it back in and he would once again immediately take it all out. So it wasn’t quite as entertaining as I hoped, but over the entirety of the trip it did get a good deal of use.
Toddler Rating: 5/10
2. Cookie Sheet Toys
My preschooler daughter has quite a few cookie sheet activities, but most aren’t appropriate for my son. I did get him his own cookie sheet and brought him a few Picasso Tiles and animal magnets to play with on it. This was another toy we brought out quite a few times. He normally played with it for a while before eventually throwing it off to the side. He enjoyed the Picasso Tiles more than the magnets. We also got some lovely “music” at one point when he discovered the cookie sheet made a fun noise when he bit it.
Toddler Rating: 7/10
3. Tonie Box
For Christmas we got our kids a Toniebox to share. If you aren’t familiar with them, they are speaker boxes for kids. You place figurines on top to play songs or read books that correspond to the figurine character.
My daughter loves listening to it and my son loves having the power to start and stop the Tonies. He will listen to about a minute before switching to a new one with lots of putting on and taking off in between. He smiles every time he impacts the sound in whatever way. His favorites are the Grinch and Moana. Several times on the trip he played happily with the two of them and the box in his lap for at least half an hour.
Toddler Rating: 10/10
4. Splash Bombs
Before leaving on our trip, we went the Dollar Tree. I let my daughter pick out one special toy for the trip and grabbed a couple splash bombs for my son. They were another thing my son played with a few times. At one point he even played “catch” with me. He would throw it in my general direction and I would drop it back in his lap. They never entertained him for long, but they were helpful.
Toddler Rating: 7/10
5. Paper Plate
At one point my son started begging for a plate when I passed my daughter back something on one. I gave him a clean one and he played with it for a few minutes. He only played with it the once, but I wanted to point out that you don’t need to get a bunch of new expensive toys to entertain your toddler.
Toddler Rating: 3/10
6. Panda Drawing Tablet
My son drew no works of art on this drawing tablet. But, he enjoyed scribbling and clearing the scribbles. He also drug the tablet around by the pen as much as he could from his car seat. And eventually (you guessed it) threw it off to the side of his seat to join the other discarded toys.
Toddler Rating: 7/10
7. Magnetic Cars
About halfway into the long 13 hour day, my son got bored of all the things we had given him so far. So, I let him play with the magnetic car track I made his sister. It uses magnetic strips, so I wasn’t concerned about him swallowing them. He still could rip off the magnets, so l had to keep a closer eye on him. He played with the car track for a while and the cars by themselves for even longer. Besides needing to make sure he didn’t peel the magnets off the cars, it was a really good way to keep him entertained. If I were to do it again, I would bring him plain matchbox cars.
Toddler Rating: 8/10
8. Reusable Stickers
When the cars became boring too, I got really desperate. I gave my son a few big reusable stickers on a background to play with. He loves stickers (I just forgot to bring some), so he enjoyed taking them on and off. It was all fun and games until he decided to start wildly waving the background around. He eventually started chewing on it too. We quickly went back to using other toys after recovering the folded, slightly soggy, and well worn background.
Toddler Rating: 8/10 Parent Rating: 3/10
Conclusion of How to Survive a Road Trip With a Toddler
I hope that our experiences give you some ideas to use for your own toddler. While most of the things we brought weren’t the most exciting things, they still kept our son from being too bored and grouchy.
I stored most of these things in the glove box to keep our car as uncluttered as possible. Whenever we stopped, I threw anything he had thrown out of his car seat into my seat to sort once we got going again. Whenever we stopped to stay for a few days, I did a more thorough cleaning and sorting. This kept everything easy to find and I always had something I could hand back to my son to play with. What does your toddler like to play with in the car?
How did you keep up with both kids activities from the front seat? I had a hard time reaching a small ice chest directly behind the front seats.
It helps that kids reach out to grab things from you. I also did a lot of dropping soft things into my son’s lap since he is still rear facing and a little hard to reach. If something was dropped that I couldn’t reach then I got it the next time we stopped.