25+ Family Fun Road Trip Activities and Games to Make the Hours Fly By! (Updated 2026)
So you’re looking for fun road trip activities for kids? How are you feeling about the impending time in the car? I hope you’re looking forward to it, but chances are there’s a little bit of dread. We’re here to help with this collection of fun road trip games, low mess crafts for the car, activity books that use their brains – and take up time!
You can often find my family and I piled into the car driving places and over the years we’ve cultivated ideas to make the time pass with more laughter and less complaining.
I know you have so much to do to prepare for your trip – and sometimes you just want it all in one place – and get it off your to-do list.
That’s what I’ve got for you here. With this list, you can safely add some well-thought-out things to your online cart and know that in a few days you’ll have great fun road trip activities for kids that will keep them entertained for hours.
What are some fun things to do on a road trip? Keep reading – we’ve got your back here!
Family Fun Road Trip Activities and Games to Make the Hours Fly By
1) Low Mess Car Crafts
THIS is our family’s favourite way to spend time. Nothing makes time fly for kids faster than making things. They can get into a creative zone and the miles can pass unnoticed!
- Occupy their time AND get them to clean? These window Markers – hands down this is our kids’ favourite. Each morning we’d get them to clean their window off to make room for that days’ creation!
- The drawback to pencil crayons in the car is the need for sharpening them. No one wants to clean pencil shavings from inside the car when you finally arrive. These Twistables make sharpening pencils no mess and easy enough for kids to do on their own!
- Don’t forget spiralbound, hardcovered sketchbooks! These are easiest to use in the car.
- Think of Aluminum Foil like playdoh for the car! Aluminum foil is moldable and can be shaped into fabulous creations! Our kids made hats and jewelry and more. Just tear off sheets and hand it back to them – just to avoid accidental cuts from the packaging. We brought clear tape too for extra creative fodder.
- Another no mess sculpting craft: Pipe Cleaners!
- Our kids LOVED water colouring books and water activity books when they were toddlers. Great to have on hand for long waits anywhere with little ones. I used to keep one in my purse for waiting room distractions.
- Sticker books that you can reposition can stimulate creative play – and can be used over and over!
2) Car Games for Kids (and Adults) That Are Actually Fun
- I Spy Road Game – We play this one as a team – but it can be competitive if that works best for your family! This one’s great – it’s also a traditional deck of cards – so, even more play options in one package.
- This Rubberneckers game is really fun – and gets great reviews for adults and kids together!
- Tangram Travel Games 360 Magnetic Puzzles and Questions Reviewers describe the magnets as really strong and their kids love the puzzles. Kids get absorbed in the puzzles – which is totally the goal!
- This set of 12 Travel Sized Board Games is really affordable. The reviews are so-so, but for the price I think you’d get quite a few hours of entertainment for a steal.
- This Scavenger Hunt Game looks really well designed for preschoolers and gets great reviews! Kids will love that it looks a bit like their own key chain.
- Reusable Travel Bingo! I love that this one has the little sliding doors! It turns the classic scavenger hunt into a bingo game.
- Hasbro has travel versions of many of their popular games. We’ve started buying them instead of the larger version for flexibility and they’re so much smaller to store:
3) Brainy (and Time-Consuming) Car Activities & Books
- THIS! Madlibs are our absolute favourite way to eat up time on the road – we usually end up crying laughing. We STILL laugh about funny stories we made years ago. Sure, there will be lots of butt and poop jokes – but secretly they’ll also be learning about adverbs and adjectives!
- These are good ones: Best of MadLibs or MadLibs on the Road
- But there’s probably a Madlibs for anything your child is into: Start here and narrow it down.
- We’ve had this Where’s Waldo? The Totally Essential Travel Collection for YEARS and we don’t tire of it. Dozens and dozens of hours of enjoyment.
- Ultimate Sticker Puzzles: License Plates Across the States: Travel Puzzles and Games Who doesn’t love sticker books?! Lots of reviewers got one of these for each of their kids and reported hours of happy entertainment.
- Laugh-Out-Loud Road Trip Jokes for Kids Can’t vouch for the jokes in this one – but reviewers like it a lot for kids.
- National Geographic Kids Ultimate U.S. Road Trip Atlas: Maps, Games, Activities, and More for Hours of Backseat Fun This one gets universally great reviews!
4) Audiobooks Make the Drive Fly By
I am a huge fan of audiobooks. I use them all the time to make my commute, workouts and housework fly by. There’s something magical about getting absorbed in a book and time passing unnoticed.
Your library probably has free audiobooks that you can download to your devices – be sure to check that out.
There are some books you just can’t get from your library so look into Audible. New members can get one month free – you can start the free trial and cancel it before the 30 days is up!
Don’t forget:
check out our collection of fun & FREE Road Trip Activities Printables, including our road trip scavenger hunt printable and our Car Counting Road Trip Printable Game!
AND
our Family Road Trip Survival Guide?
has great tips that will help your trip planning.
I hope you have a fabulous trip filled with great memories (or at least ones you can laugh about later)! These super fun road trip activities and games will help the time fly by.
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Robin and Ed are a DIY-loving couple with over 25 years of design and build experience. Also, Robin is a Nutritionist and former Registered Dietitian and Ed is an award-winning Business Educator. We share strategies for living a rich life on a DIY budget: creative money-savvy ideas for a stylish home, healthy meals and family fun. Our work has been published in the pages of Do It Yourself, Farmhouse Style and Better Homes & Gardens magazines.
