Travel Activity Binder with I Spy Pages for Kids

On a trip to Arizona, I knew that we not only had a three and a half hour long flight but we planned to drive a lot once in Arizona.  Therefore, I wanted to put something together to help entertain S.

The travel activity binder emerged: something to entertain, educate and keep her excited about what was next on our trip.

For each day of our trip, I assembled the following:

• A very simple itinerary – who were we going to see (family or friends) and I included pictures since my daughter only sees my husband’s family about once a year; what we were going to do, see, visit and a brief description (if you have older kids you may want to include more details and information); and how long was it going to take to get there (were we going to be in the car for 15 minutes or 2 hours).
• Coloring pages based on that day’s activities – I Googled ‘Arizona coloring pages’ or a specific place for example ‘Grand Canyon coloring pages’ and then printed out what would work with our trip.
• I Spy pages based again on what was on the day’s agenda {more information on these below}
• Road Trip Bingo – I printed off pages from the following sites: MomsMinivan and Prepared Not Scared
• Maps (zoo map, hiking trail map, map of city or state you are visiting) – S loves to ‘tell’ me where we are and which direction we should go after studying a map
• Education worksheets or activity sheets (numbers, letters and shapes practice for S) – there are various printable worksheets online

I am going to be honest; this was an experiment with S.  I was not sure how much we would use the travel activity binder or if she would be too young to enjoy it.  I found that on the days where we were driving to a destination we used the binder more than on days where we were just hanging out at the pool with family, which was the idea to entertain S while on the go.

I discovered that S would flip past the itinerary pages quickly to get to the “good” stuff.  She did enjoy the rest of the travel activity binder, particularly the I Spy pages.

I should have known that the I Spy pages would be a hit, but they were seriously the best part of the travel activity binder!  They saved us on multiple occasions from a meltdown/temper tantrum especially the time S did not want to go for a hike in Sedona, AZ.  I pulled out the I Spy page from the binder, let her choose a marker and off we went – happy!

The whole family had fun searching for items from the I Spy pages and it turned a regular hike into an adventure!

The I Spy pages were themed to what we were going to be doing that day.  I made pages for the following: Tonto National Monument (cliff dwellings), Red Rock State Park in Sedona, Oak Creek State Park near Sedona, and Grand Canyon National Park.  In addition, I made two I Spy pages for the airplane and one themed for a restaurant.  On each I Spy page I had a letter, color and shape for S to find an object that started with the letter or was that color or shape.  The rest of the I Spy page was pictures of items to find, everything from a park ranger to a cactus to a water fountain.  I used Microsoft Word to assemble the I Spy pages.

With the success of these I Spy pages I look forward to creating more for S for future trips.

How do you keep your children interested in seeing tourist attractions?

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