The Aloha State

One of our favorite games to play on a road trip involves finding as many license plates from different states as we can during the course of our trip. Obsessively stalking the rear-end of vehicles on our 1100 mile drive to South Carolina last summer, we used sheets of paper, pencils, and a wooden clip board to cross off 43 of 50 states (Hang loose! We even spotted Hawaii somewhere near Lexington, Kentucky.). An inexpensive way to track our progress, inevitably someone melted a candy bar on our map and it fell into the sliding door jam…twice.

Since our old-school method of playing the license plate game, we discovered the State Plate app for the iPad. This looks like a fantastic download for high-tech families lucky enough to own the iPad. In the mean time, we were thrilled to discover a sturdier version of the U.S.A License Plate Game from the kid-experts at Melissa & Doug*.

West Virginia Spotted in a Parking Lot

Durable, colorful, and educational (in true Melissa & Doug form), the U.S.A. License Plate Game involves zero flying projectiles (game pieces are held together with tight bands, flipping to show a sample license plate design, the name of the state capitol, and two colors—red or blue). Used to play the traditional license plate game, track your trip itinerary, or pit family members against each other in a friendly game of trivia.

A perfect time to play the license plate game, holiday travelers were spotted from 26 different states as we spread our journey out over the long Thanksgiving weekend. Spotting Florida at a red light, Colorado on an on-ramp, and West Virginia in a parking lot, ideal places for license plate variety are rest stops, popular restaurants, and hotel parking lots. Assigning the kids with the task of flipping the game pieces and locating the states, we may have taken a ridiculous detour or two in the name of vacation-induced OCD.

U.S.A. License Plate Game

A fun Christmas gift for the road-tripper in your family, the U.S.A. License Plate Game is our de facto pick this year. No batteries required.

*We asked the folks at Melissa & Doug to take the game on the road with us this past holiday weekend. We’re not giving it back.

My first impression opening the Mind Jewel box was “Wow!  This is gorgeous!”  Striking, saturated hues of blue, red and green semi-translucent “jewels” joined together form this multifaceted sphere.  Taking it into my hand raised the level of my admiration even higher: this puzzle is a joy to hold! Light, unique in shape and texture; certainly not a typical cube puzzle.

 Looking it over I first wondered, “where do I start?”  The Mind Jewel does not come with any instructions, so the first step of the puzzle is how to begin.  It only required a short bit of time to find an “end jewel” and begin to disassemble the puzzle.  Individual pentagonal jewels are connected to each other linearly via a single elastic shock cord.  The player unwinds the coiled pieces which, under the tension of the shock cord, twist and shift themselves into a jumbled mass.  The object is to reassemble them into the original sphere.  Now, as each jewel has only one or two positions in which they can be rotated along the cord you’d think this would be easy. However this is more of a mindtease than meets the eye!

 I played with the Mind Jewel for about 20 minutes after removing it from the packaging.  To be totally honest, for the first few minutes I cheated.  I spent that time c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y unwinding one jewel at a time trying to memorize the order and position each was in.  I felt vindicated as the Mind Jewel, lacking instructions, also lacks a printed solution.  My attempt to win via memory alone was thwarted though by the aforementioned shock cord action which, in no time, had the Mind Jewel writhing and coiling itself into an unrecognizable form!

 Solving the Mind Jewel is equally a test of dexterity as well as intuition.  Despite notches and grooves on the individual segments meant to help keep them together, the elasticity of the cord gives this puzzle a mind of its own and it will continue to pull and twist itself apart as you try to build it.  A good, strong hand is needed to not lose ground, though my 12 year old daughter and her friends had no more trouble with it than I did despite their much smaller hands.  I was able to reconstruct the puzzle, as did the girls, within a time frame that allowed it to be a challenge as well as solvable fun!

As a RoadTrip game the Mind Jewel will engage the attention and hands of children of all ages without so much frustration as to be discouraging.  It is aesthetically appealing, interesting and a fun challenge with an attainable reward!

We’re thrilled to have Jessica Almy of Vegbooks guest posting! She’s the queen of kids’ book reviews from a vegetarian perspective, and has a four year-old daughter, so she’s always reading the latest and best books. Plus she has hand-on experience in the car because her family rocks the road trip. She’s also got a great Facebook page.

Our family car is a small sedan, so we’re picky about what we take on road trips.  A cooler of food, our water bottles, some CDs, my daughter’s Etch-A-Sketch, and a handful of books are usually what make the cut.

Picking which books to bring is the hard part.  My husband usually drives, so the books we choose usually have to do double-duty of keeping kiddo and me entertained.  Here are ten that do the trick.

1 ) Who Is the Beast?
by Keith Baker

Lush illustrations, a positive message, and a hidden snail on each page make this book a favorite.  Since the story is set in a rain forest, we love naming all of the animals who make an appearance – including a bee, catfish, and snake – and seeking out the tiny snail who blends into the pictures.  (I still forget where it is on some pages!)

2 ) Horton Hears A Who!
by Dr. Seuss

This is one of my all-time favorite stories, featuring the very lovable elephant Horton.  On his adventure to save the microscopic Whos, Horton experiences a wide range of emotions, from joy upon discovering new friends to fatigue and frustration when he begins to lose hope that he’ll find them again.  Roadtripping kids might be able to relate.

3 ) Eloise’s Pirate Adventure (Ready-to-Read. Level 1)
based on the Art of Hilary Knight

Actually any early reader based on one of our favorite characters will do.  We love the Fancy Nancy “I Can Read” series too.  Boys also have many options to pick from and the books are small and easy to travel with. Simple words and an easy-to-follow story make these kinds of books fun choices for word games.  We count common words like “the,” sound out difficult words, find all the words that start with the letter “p,” guess what word comes next, etc.

4 ) If Frogs Made the Weather
by Marion Dane Bauer and Dorothy Donahue

Books that get our creative juices flowing are a must, and this fun book – about what type of weather different animals would choose – works perfectly.  After reading it through, we might find ourselves wondering where animals would go on vacation, what kind of cars they would drive, or where they’d stop for lunch.

5 ) Dog Heaven
by Cynthia Rylant

Sometimes it’s good to bring a serious book along to spark the kind of conversations that we seem never to have time for at home.  Cynthia Rylant’s sensitive tribute to the passing of dogs is a good choice for our family, since it elicits discussion of our beloved cat who died, the role of animal companions in our family and our society, life after death, and God’s compassion.  Other families might appreciate Bible stories, traditional folk lore, or other literature that’s meaningful to their faith and traditions.

6 ) Ladybug Girl at the Beach
by David Soman and Jackie Davis

Not only is this new release vacation-themed, but it features a wonderfully independent and inventive little girl, Lulu.  We brought this book on a recent trip to the beach, and my kiddo looked at it the whole drive back, reliving her memories of the shore.

7 ) My Friend Rabbit by Eric Rohmann

8 ) The Cinder-Eyed Cats by Eric Rohmann

9 ) Time Flies by Eric Rohmann

10 ) Tuesday by David Wiesner

What these final four books have in common (other than that three are illustrated by the amazing Eric Rohmann) is that they are all wordless, or mostly wordless, adventure books.  Not only do these books allow us to make up the stories our own way, changing them each time we “read” them, but they’re also great to keep a kid entertained on her very own, freeing up the person in the passenger seat to fiddle with the GPS, browse the map, or just take a little snooze.

Playing MASTERMIND Attaché: Siblings Unite!

If you grew up in a family like mine, a piece of duct tape stuck firmly to the exact mid-point between the seat my sister and I sat on the ENTIRE way from Michigan to Colorado, sans interstate. Without Nintendo DS, Wii, and DVD players, we had no choice but to develop the skill of spitting out and sucking in saliva before it hit the seat. I once learned to french braid my hair in the fourteen hour span between home and Colonial Williamsburg. Other families went to amusement parks, had cabins, and even sported season passes to the community swimming pool. No such luck for two sisters forced together for our own good.

Let’s face it, the slippery-slope we call the technology curve is a blessing and a curse for today’s road tripping families. We have GPS and geocaching, iPhone apps, and even paperless books. Flat tire? No problem. Call a tow truck or just push the assistance button on the dash. Did Elroy and Judy Jetson ever secretly share their tape player as their rocket took the self-guided tour of Gettysburg?

As a mom of three young kids, I have a love/hate relationship with digital entertainment on our road trips. When they were younger, yes, a Teletubbies DVD or two bought us enough time to not completely dread the annual 3.5 hour drive home for Thanksgiving. This summer things changed. Loading my iPhone with educational and toddler-friendly apps was entirely well-intentioned, before it backfired. The problem? Three kids, one toy = eight straight hours on the road. Did anyone see clumps of my hair at the wayside?

Let’s talk about the DVD player, shall we? The network of RedBox DVD kiosks along the main interstate corridor is an efficient way to find, rent, watch, and return movies for less than $2/day. The downside? With great power comes great responsibility. I personally owe the Academy an apology for producing the world’s youngest movie critics.

With the GPS system pleasantly chirping commands to turn left, stay in the right lane, and to “when possible, make a u-turn,” not only can you answer the question, “Are we there yet?,” you can pinpoint the exact minute you’ll arrive. My oldest son obsesses over the arrival time like an outtake from the movie Rain Man. One day, I let him just hold the GPS unit and tell me when to turn (note: make sure your child actually knows left from right before you try this at home).

Then I had an epiphany.

I realized we stopped looking out the window. We didn’t play “I spy!” and look for license plates and road signs and try and find the moon and the sun out at the same time. Technology was making all of us crabby. So we unplugged.  And just for my oldest son’s benefit, I openly defied the GPS lady. On a whim, we stopped at a donuts shop and found lakes with skipping stones. I scrounged up wooden clip boards and blank paper and encouraged sketches of where we’d been.

The whining was hard at first and I’m the last thing from a martyr. They’re still too young and I’m still too impatient to completely cut movies and the iPhone out of a full-day road trip. BUT, we established a system whereby each kid can use three, and only three, ten minute intervals on the phone that day. Movie choice is on a rotating basis and we wait for a more challenging moment fire up the laptop (for us, the hour before a meal stop). As it turns out, our public library has free, educational videos and even books on DVD.

Easy to store in travel compartments, or just behind the seat, are travel-sized board games and playing cards. Card games like Crazy 8, Old Maid, and Go Fish are other excellent ways to build math skills and pass the time. We even bring these games into restaurants with us, allowing other patrons to enjoy their meals.

With another diatribe off my chest; technology is part of the world we live in. Our kids learn differently and in ways our brains are trying to adapt to like old dogs with new tricks. Each family has a different tolerance level and a different idea of quality time. Unplugged kids will survive. We did.

Back in the day, parents handed fussy toddlers their keys, a teething toy or maybe a rattle. Now, we hand over the iPhone. The most common question asked by parents who look for travel advice isn’t about what highway to travel or even about kid-friendly luggage. It’s about iPhone apps. So, we decided to do some research and let our fingers do the downloading as we tried out some of the top contenders and a few more obscure apps. Here are our recommendations for the apps worth downloading. Let the happy road trips begin!

Disney’s Fairies Fly
$4.99
Gets high marks from parents for being easy enough for younger kids but interesting enough for parents. The $4.99 price tag says Disney, but apparently Pixie Hollow is worth the hefty price tag. The graphics are worthy of the Disney name, where the goal is to learn to fly like a fairy and then soar thru various obstacles. Like all memory-intensive apps, some users report problems with crashing.

ABC’s
Free
This app is free because it’s ad sponsored, so user beware. But, if you need a quick distraction and don’t want to make an investment, this might be worth it. It’s beyond simple, you press a key and move thru the alphabet. Toddlers will find it fun to push the button and see what happens, older kids might be interested in reciting the alphabet.

Virtual Zippo Lighter
Free
Whether you’re secretly reliving your Bon Jovi concert days or just keeping your kids occupied in the car, the app is very cool. It’s been downloaded over 3 million times, and averages about 100,00 downloads per week. Doesn’t that make you feel popular? The app is eearily accurate, with a flame that always points up and very realistic clicking noises.

Wheels on the Bus
$.99
Imagine an interactive book for toddlers, using the iPhone as the medium. Five languages are included and you can record your own voice and learn about musical instruments while keeping a toddler entertained easily. Parents give the app high marks and this is consistently one of the top downloaded apps in iTunes. Your child can even create a duet with one of the narrators. There are quite a few options for customizing the flow of the app, so kids don’t tire of it after just a few minutes.

Teach Me: Kindergarten
$.99
Teaches sight words, addition, subtraction and spelling to Kindergarten-aged children. Parents select the subjects, difficulty levels or even choose specific questions then review performance to track how your child is learning. Kids earn coins for every three correct answers which can then be used to buy stickers to place in fun sticker scenes that can be exported as wallpaper or emailed to family and friends.

Balloonimals
$1.99
Inflate the balloon by blowing into the microphone (iPod Touch users can touch the screen), then give the phone a shake to construct an animal. Each shake gives your animal a bit more detail. When your animal is fully formed, he’s ready to play (you tap the screen to get him to do various tricks). The animals cycle randomly and when you’re done playing you can blow the animal up until it pops, and create another.

Bugdom 2
$3.99
You’re Skip, tracking down the Bully Bee that stole his backpack. Expect action adventure of the preschool variety. The premise is familiar: you want to keep from being exterminated, squashed, or canned while making friends and beating the bad guys. Very few controls make this easy to learn — you tilt the phone to move and a harder tilt makes Skip move faster. The graphics are awesome but Skip can be hard to control. For a long road trip this would be a great buy.

Toddler Teasers
$1.99
A series of about a dozen simple themes, all focused on teaching colors, letters, animals or something similar to toddlers. You can purchase a topic individually or buy a bundle of several together. Virtual stickers act as rewards. Spoken words ask the child to pick out the correct shape or letter and then give positive reinforcement for the correct answer. An incorrect answer causes that option to disappear from the screen. All in all, it’s so simple that you might not be tempted, but for the two year-old set, it’s pure gold.

Peekaboo Barn
$1.99
Inside the barn, play peekaboo by tapping on the doors, guess who the animal is by the sound they make and get excited by who pops out. Animal names in both English and Spanish. Another simple is better concept, start with English (or Spanish) and then advance to the other language once you have mastered whatever is primarly spoken at home. Fantastic for younger kids, the app is simple to use and doesn’t require supervision — perfect for the back seat.

Wordex
$.99
See a real world photograph of an object and then drag letter tiles to properly spell the name of the object. You can’t spell a word wrong, and for a more advance form of play, choose to hide any number of letters. The app is available in about 10 languages, so it’s perfect for the family that travels. There’s no score, so kids can play cooperatively in the back seat. Three and four letter words are available, so children as young as three or four can probaby enjoy the app easily.

I love Common Sense Media. I’m a slacker mom, but I don’t want my daughter watching inappropriate TV or movies. And, being a slacker, I’m definately not volunteering to pre-screen every tween movie. That’s where Common Sense Media comes in.

Their ratings and reviews on movies are thoughtful and give me enough information to let me decide for myself whether this is something my daughter would enjoy. I find their discussion points useful for talking about the movie afterwards, and we’ve had some great family talks using their suggestions. My daughter is getting old enough to ask about R-rated movies (there’s no way in hell I think she needs to watch them any time soon) because some of her friends get to watch them. I used the rating information from Common Sense Media to talk to her about what is allowed at different ratings, and we read the reviews of the movies her friends have watched to discuss why I think they are inappropriate for her. I don’t expect this to work forever, but for the time being she seems to understand and agree with my position. (Please don’t email to tell me how soon this is going to change, denial works splendidly for me.)

They just released a selection of Travel Flicks for various ages. Perfect for your next road trip. The list is pretty short, I’d love to see at least a dozen choices for each age group, but it got me thinking and reading at least.

I admit when Judy Colbert contacted me and told me about her book on temper tantrums I was skeptical. But, I was also interested. After all, who hasn’t had a temper tantrum on a road trip? I’m not even going to pretend I haven’t had a few world class tantrums in the car.

Colbert’s book aims to help parents prevent tantrums in the first place, cut them short when they do occur, and, failing both of those, just help you roll with the punches and make it thru. I found most of the information to be pretty common sense, and I would have appreciated a lot more tips on exactly how to handle more specific situations.

But, I did find some useful advice on preventing tantrums that seemed particularly suited for the road. In particular, Colbert really re-emphasized that kids need a schedule, regular breaks and being an overachiever in terms of how much ground to cover doesn’t always pay off. I think I always try to approach a trip as if a tantrum isn’t a possiblity, that we’ll have all put our super-power-tantrum-busting capes on that day and life will be swell. Wrong! I see that I need to do more planning and avoid the more common causes of tantrums in our family.

I’ve really noticed how much junk food makes us all cranky after a long day in the car so I’m going to try to do as much healthy eating as possible. It’s also too easy for us to run late getting started and then really punish ourselves with late arrivals, not enough sleep and a second day of road trip hell. I’m going to work on setting a more realistic schedule this summer when we go to Yellowstone and then stick to it. We’ll see how that goes.

With Guitar Hero: World Tour Mobile, you can take all the fun cross country. With 15 all new tracks plus a bonus song every month, you have plenty to practice. Play against live opponents and chat with them after the game. Choose from the guitar or drums for every song. I don’t think anything will stop the teenage eye rolls, but this will go a long way towards keeping peace (just don’t forget the earphones).

These games currently reign at #1 in our family for best-ever car games. The basic premise is that on your turn you answer a question about whether you’d rather eat super gross item A or B, or whether you’d rather live without feet or hands, that sort of thing. The questions are fun and thought provoking, and you learn a lot about the people in the car with you. The game is also easy to play in the car without disturbing the driver, and we usually play for about an hour without a break — and the time goes quickly. The games are also very well done because you can use the cards over and over, as different people get the question the answer changes, so one box of question cards has lasted us about a year.

The games are probably not suitable for very young children, so look at the box before buying.  There are several versions so pick the one best matched to your particular road trip. Teens would have a blast with this game, it’s not just for kids!