How to Entertain a 1-year-old When Travelling by Car?

Having read Natalie’s story about how she was entertaining 1-year-old Arseny in a 24-hours trip by train, I thought that I should also start preparing for the forthcoming 11-hours travelling in our car (we were going to the International Sahaja Yoga Festival, from Nizhny Novgorod to Togliatti, Russia).

I borrowed some of Natalie’s ideas. The following things were bought in the nearest store “1000 Small Things”:

1. Cocktail Straws (75 cents).
2. 2 sheets with stickers (75 cents): vegetables and flowers (for us to study the variety of their kinds).
3. Large colourful paper clips (85 cents).
4. A plastic glass with a lid for washing the brushes (50 cents.)

Like Natalie, I cut each straw into two pieces and then put them into the jar left after Chinese tea. The paper clips were put into the glass for brushes which has a round hole in its lid. I also cut the poster with the Russian alphabet and pictures into squares  (I did not buy it specially for the trip; when our daughter was 1-6 months old, the poster was hanging above the changing table). The printed out pictures of animals were put into a photo album (80 cents). I also took a developing toy-brick which was presented to Soniya by her grandfather and the pictures for lacing. So, let’s see whether our daughter will like my choice?

On the day of the departure, the alarm clock rings at 3:45 am. We wash our faces, meditate, put the rest of the bags into the boot. At 4:30 I take sleeping Soniya into my hands (immediately she opens her eyes and starts analyzing everything around her with much interest). 4:40 –we are starting off.

As I had hoped, Soniya was sleeping during the first 2,5 hours of our trip. And then everything I had prepared was used one by one. Here is the rating of the child’s preferences:

1st place – was shared by the paper clips, cocktail straws, developing brick, pictures from the alphabet poster and lacing game. Soniya spent 10-15 minutes with each of these items. She was pleased to throw about the paper clips and then gather them. I tried to make the game more difficult suggesting Soniya to collect the clips according to their colour. No, we are too little for that so far. The straws were a success only when I showed Soniya that you can blow into them. On the way to Togliatti, it was I who was  doing it and on the way back our baby-girl had already learnt what it means to blow. But we were extremely careful with the straws – sometimes the car makes very steep turns and brakes unexpectedly (I think it was me who finished the game very soon). As for the developing brick, Soniya herself was inventing new and new games with it. In some time we added laces to the parts of the brick. And she really loved the cards with the letters and pictures because they were bound with elastic. It turned out that lots of things could be done with ordinary elastic!

2nd plce – bananas. Natalie’s Arseny was busy with eating cucumbers and our Soniya – with eating bananas. This activity brought the child so much fun!

3rd place – pictures of animals. Soniya turned the pages of the photo album just for a couple of minutes. She knew these pictures so well already!

4th place – stickers. Either the stickers I had bought were too small or there was some other reason, but Soniya was not interested in sticking them to herself and me at all. “Are you all right, mummy?” – her eyes were saying. And I would have taken them away, if I had not invented to stick them to some paper (it did not matter that it was our map ). But now, at home, from time to time, we play with the stickers which were left sticking them to the pages of my notebook.

And now attention – the hit that arouse the child’s greatest interest! The developing game “Dress the Bears according to the Mood and Season”. Soniya was presented with it at the Festival and she was busy with it (inventing her own rules) twice during 30-40 minutes! And when she got tired of the bears, she turned to the wet wipes. She had been trying to get to them for a long time already but her mummy had not given her a chance. But that time it appeared that they could be taken out from the package in such a nice way and then pushed back, then again taken out, thrown about the back of the car and used for “cleaning” mummy…

In such a way we first got to the venue of the Festival (9,5-hours trip) and then back home (11,5-hour trip). Really, traveling with a 1-year-old child is not such a tiresome activity as it may seem. And playing with the child in the car, the adult also does not find a long moving by car a burden on him

Anastasia

Illustrations to the article:

photos by the author

To read this article in Russian, please, visit here.

Next we will tell you how to avoid mud from the wheels of the stroller/pram in one’s house…