Keep them Quiet in the Car

One of the hardest things about riding in the car (or van in my case) is the constant noise that comes from the back seat. Anyone else?? With 3 kids, 7 and under, our van is always a place of noise and for some unknown reason it seems like our children get LOUDER in the van. Now, we live in the city but we drive A LOT. We live 30 minutes from our church and drive 30 minutes or longer multiple times a week. Let's not even touch on the 8 hours or more trips we take a few times a year. Or while we contemplate a 14.5 hours car drive to the Happiest Place on Earth. :) All this to say, we spend a lot of time in out van.

Keeping the noise down in our van is always a struggle but it's one that I have been working to curb. There are many ways to keep kids entertained in the can on short and long trips and we use them all. The kindle for games, and computer for movies are typically reserved for longer trips in which we will be driving for multiple hours. For our long distance local trips (30 minutes) we often listen to audio books that the whole family will enjoy. These methods helps keep some of the noise down during trips, but not all of it.

My favorite way to keep our kids occupied in the van no matter how long or short a trip is our kid kit. Our kid kit has evolved over the years from a small bag, to a basket, to a large bag and now to a storage cube fabric box. This is the KEY to keeping our kids occupied in the car and honestly to keep them from screaming and asking "are we there yet?" Any type of bag, basket or container will work to keep in your van. The placement of this container is of UPMOST importance! You want your child to be able to reach this on their OWN. It's all good and dandy to have a container for to keep your kids entertained BUT it won't work to well if its not within their own reach. Ours currently sits in the third row of the van, in the center seat between the seats of our two oldest kids ages 7 and 4. Our 18 month old, is to young to have access to this yet, but her older sister is great at getting toys and books and passing them to her. So let's dig in to what's inside our kid kit.

- Small Toys; currently Paw Patrol toys that have been up in the closet for a few weeks. All 3 of my children will play with these.

- Math Wraps; Basic addition memorizing practice

- Slide and See Under the Sea; for 2 youngest

- Muddle and Match Jungle Animals; used by all

- Color and Pop- Up Animals and Dinosaurs along with colored pencils; oldest have been working on coloring these in to complete their pop up books

-The Missing BookShop; illustrated chapter book for my oldest to read and middle to look at pictures

- Billy and the Mini Monsters; comic style beginner chapter book that my 4 year old LOVES

-First 100 words in Chinese; our children are learning Mandarin and this get them familiar with pin yin and Chinese characters

- Never Get Board Book; an activity book for my oldest

One last tip! Change your Kid Kit out frequently!! For us, we change our car basket out once a month when we do a deep clean of the van. This seems to work best for us as the big kids clean out the van they find all their toys and books that fell out of the box and bring EVERYTHING inside. I change out the books and toys with items I have put away that the kids haven't seen in a while, similarly to how I change out their toys. Do you have a kid kit in your car?