First, I suspect/hope we will have a lot of new readers trafficking our site today, due to Taste of USA voting. In the event I am correct... Welcome newcomers. Hopefully you'll do more than just drop by. Hopefully you'll decide to hang out with us for a few weeks and see what all the fun is about. With a little luck you won't want to leave and, for some of you... we might even have to solicit help in weaning you off our community.
I'm feeling in the dark. I haven't seen Ray since yesterday and now all I have is this short note that he's left behind. The note says something about Cassie, Julie, Stacie, Maureen, awiniowa, and Nicole (in that order) being "brilliant" readers and... "...don't bother leaving the light on for me."
Taste of USA Voting Today! It's easy. Click on the Taste of USA icon in the top right hand corner of my blog. You will immediately be greeted by Cheryl and Katie who will direct you to the comment section so you can brag about "what your state's made of." Voting polls will close at 9:00 EASTERN standard time. The winning state wins a fun-filled afternoon with Claudia and Cheryl AND will be announced on Saturday morning.
New highlowaha Feature. This feature is compliments of my mother in law who made the suggestion. Each Friday I will provide a short preview of reasons to tune in next week and on Saturday I will do a brief (I mean brief) recap of the week. It will take a few weeks for me to get the hang of it, so bear with me. Coming up next week... Taming the Paper Tiger, Whacking Wednesday, One Last Hoorah, and Friends. Not the best, most compelling lead-in to the week, but I like the element of surprise. This will take some getting used to. Let me know what you think of the idea
Free for All Fun... Yesterday Nicole asked for fun ways to entertain kids on a long car ride. Today let's brainstorm some additional solutions. Also, what's something for which you would like fresh ideas? Let us take a crack at it.
Now with no further ado... Let the Taste of USA voting begin and the Free-for-All-ing commence.
Signing off until tomorrow...
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10 comments:
I know the last thing we should resort to with our children is money however if it works it works!! I use to go on a lot of camping trips with my aunt when I was litle and she would do two things. First she would give each of us a roll of quarters (I believe it is a $10 roll) that we were responsible for holding on to the entire ride. Every time we would mention are we there yet or any other form of how long it was until we got there we would have to give up a quarter. I am sure you could change the money to something else that they are enthusiastic about but money always seemed to work for me when I was a kid. When they get to there destination they can spend their left over money on whatever they want.
Idea #2 my aunt did to help the time pass was goodie bags! Take a run to the dollar store and you can fill these bags with activities galor. I did find with those that we tended to dig through everything all at once and it really only lasted maybe a half our or so. But I guess a half hour is a half our of sanity. I hope you have an enjoyable trip!
I like the idea of looking forward and looking back.
As for car games, we always do the license plate game. My aunt just found a great magnet board that had all the states and you added a magnet to the state when you saw its license plate.
My husband and I also play the name game. I might say Tom Cruise then he would have to say a name beginning with C for Cruise. For some reason this keeps us entertained forever and it can be easily adapted to do cartoon characters, etc. for kids.
Taste of USA is getting lots of comments! How fun reading what you love about your states. I have to go vote for Texas even though I'm lucky enough to already get to participate on a weekly basis!
I like the idea of looking forward and briefing on our week. I'm intrigued to find out what Taming the Paper Tiger is all about.
Entertaining kids... Nicole what are the ages of your children? Your husband will be driving, right? Get some fun books (maybe books about taking vacations) and read to your kids on the drive. I'm always surprised how entertained my boys are by a book.
Something my husband and I do on long car trips is think of a theme and name one item for each letter of the alphabet. For example Food would be A - applesauce, B- burrito, and so on. Could you get some books on CD from the library? I don't know how old your kids are, but but that is something even little kids may like.
Oh, another idea. What about getting treats or small toys that only come out at a certain time. Maybe every hour a new thing would come out. Or maybe something new would come out every time you cross a state line. That way they wouldn't go through all the little prizes in 30 minutes. Don't forget to save some fun stuff for the ride back!
I drive from New York to Florida each year with my kids. I leave NY at around 9PM so the kids will be ready to fall asleep by 10:30 (this was before they were teenagers of course). They usually slept until 7 AM. By the time they are getting antsy we were half way there. For the rest of the trip we brought a portable tv/dvd player. They each had to guess a number to see whose dvd was first. I always let the baby win!! The other thing I did was to bring my kids nintendo or xbox game. I got the hook up for the car and they were able to play 2 person games. I had a hand held game for the baby. She was 8yrs younget than my son and 5yrs younger than my daughter so she needed different stimulation. Crayons and coloring books were great. I also got those kids trivia cards and played trivia games with them. By the time they were bored we were there. Till this day my kids look forward to road trips. It gives us a lot of "bonding" time. My kids are 18,15,10 and most of the time are arguing about stupid little things. Its nice to get them together and let them interact in a small space. Hey believe me they prefer road trips to planes. I must have done something right!!! It's rare in a parents life that they actually think they "hit their mark" so I am running with it!
I like playing games in the car. For instance, finding road signs that have words that begin with A, B, C, D, E, and so on until the end of the alphabet.
Two things...
First, I seem to remember a while back we brainstormed things you could in the car on a long road trip. Does anyone have any recollection when that was. Darn, if my labels were better we could recall the entry easy peasy. I do believe it was a Free for All Friday, but am not sure. I seem to remember Melanie making some fun contributions. Ooohhh.... wait. I think it came up before I left on my trip to Leadershape. That would have been around Friday, May 2. Nicole, maybe you can dig into the archives for a few more fun suggestions.
Also... artnme... I need your mailing address! If anyone sees or talks to Patrick, let him know I am trying to track his information down.
I just read in a magazine a few cute ideas for entertainment in the car.
1. For every state line you cross, give your kids a goodie bag with things from that state. They gave examples like a coloring page with that state's flower, bird, etc..., candy/food the state is known for, I think they gave other examples but I can't think of them. Then they're excited to get into every state.
2. Give your kids a blank USA map and for every new license plate you see, they can color that state. Bonus, name the capital. See if you get the whole map colored.
3. Make a "map" on the ceiling of your car using I guess paper, I can't remember exactly how they did it. But then they used a little plastic car from a board game and attached it to the ceiling with velcro. Then as they moved into different cities the kids could move their car, and they could see how far they'd gone. IT's a cute idea if you could figure out how to construct it.
Good luck!
Thanks for all the great ideas everyone. My kids are 8, 5 and 1. The baby is the one I'm most concerned about. The other 2 can entertain themselves. I like the quarter idea. Although my 5 year old could care less about money so I'm not sure it will work with her. My son will love it. We have some travel activities that I picked up at the store. Keep 'em coming! It's going to be a long ride. I will search the archives too!
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