I love to travel with my kids, but I’ve learned that I need to plan activities to keep kids busy on the road. This travel art kit is a great solution!

Create a travel art picture kit to keep kids busy on road trips.

Some links on this site are affiliate links and I may earn a small commission at no cost to you. Thank you! Learn more.

If you follow me on Instagram, you know that I took my kids on quite the road trip this summer! First, we drove to Sacramento, where we dropped my nephew off at my brother’s house. Every summer he stays with us for a week. From Sacramento, we drove to Idaho to visit my sister, then up into the Idaho mountains for a family reunion. After that, we drove south to Utah, where we played tourists and went to my grandmother’s 90th birthday party. We were gone for just over three weeks. That’s a long time to have kids on the road, especially when you consider that I was solo parenting for most of that time.

I love traveling light, so I’m always looking for simple solutions to keep kids busy as we travel. This summer I created a simple travel art kit that was a big hit, and I’m sharing this simple travel solution.

See also:

Create a Travel Art Kit to Keep Kids Busy on the Road

I’ve been using travel journals with my kids for years; we make one for every trip we take. Sometime’s they’re fancy, and sometimes they’re simple spiral bound notebooks. This year I extended my kids’ creativity with a few extra supplies. We added:

Note: if even washable markers make you nervous, try substituting Crayola Color Wonder products.

Here’s the secret: these supplies were for when we were not in the car! I’ve learned that, just like my kids need to decompress from school, sometimes they need to decompress from being in the car. Going to a park is my favorite way for them to decompress, but that’s not always possible! We’ve stayed in towns in Nevada where, as far as I can tell, there IS no park!

After a long day in the car, it’s easy to turn on the TV and let them watch whatever’s on. It’s fine to do that sometimes, but it’s not a three week solution. And that’s where this simple little kit comes in.

We kept these supplies in a simple canvas bag (a small backpack would work even better). We pulled it out when we arrived at our hotel or Airbnb place, and the kids got to work.

Instead of whining children, I got an assortment of paper bags,

DIY paper bags kids can make and more simple tips for keeping kids busy on the road

This charming house created by five-year-old Anna,

paper crafting to keep kids busy on the road

And dozens of other projects that didn’t make it on film. Definitely a win!

Have you ever created a travel art kit for your kids? What did you pack? What would pack for your next trip? Please share your ideas, along with more tips to keep kids busy on the road in the comments below. You can also share on my Facebook page, and you can always tag me on Instagram.