Reading tips for travel with kids - Learning to Read Together

In the next couple of blog posts I will be providing reading tips for travel with kids. These tips will consist of reading activities to do in the car or plane and travel book recommendations. I will also be sharing reading activities and books that are in our carry-on bag.

Our family loves to travel! We have driven cross country with Tim, traveled out of the country, and taken many plane trips to visit friends and family. Traveling has gotten easier as Tim has gotten older but the theme when you travel with kids remains the same- be sure to have endless entertainment! Long hours in the car, waiting at the airport and being trapped on an airplane can be a parent’s nightmare if you are not prepared. Thankfully, there are lots of reading activities to pass the time and support reading development at the same time.

Reading on the Road: 10 reading tips for travel with kids in the car.

1. Before your trip, visit your local library and have books at your child’s reading level to read in the car. You may also have books about the place that you are traveling to.

2. Play the alphabet game with signs on the highway. Beginning at A, have everyone find a sign that has a word each letter in the alphabet in it. Once one person uses a sign for his or her word, that sign is off limits. The first person to get to Z wins! I used to play this game as a child on long road trip and it was a lot of fun!

3. Play I spy… You can say “I spy something that begins with the letter______. I spy something that begins with the sound_________. I spy something that ends with the sound__________. I spy something that rhymes with__________. You could also play 20 questions. We often play 20 questions at a restaurant while waiting for our food to arrive. Tim loves it!

4. Make a travel diary or scrapbook with pictures from your trip and captions or sentences to go with them. Your child could take pictures of sites along the way or draw pictures and then write captions under the pictures and/or a brief sentence as to why this place was special to them. Barnes & Nobles had an awesome travel journal. You could also make your own!

5. Write a postcard to a friend or family member from each place that you stop or visit. You can mail them at your hotel that you stop at for the night.

6. Bring a cookie sheet with magnetic letters and have your child see how many words he or she can make in each word family i.e. “at” family words-cat, sat, hat, bat etc. Your child may just want to play and make words on the cookie sheet as well.

7. Books on cd are also a great way to pass the time for long car rides! Oftentimes children’s books on cd come with a copy of the book as well so your child can follow along. Children’s cd and songs work as well as they often promote rhyming!

8. Bring along a children’s atlas or book about the place or state in which you are going. You could have your child follow your route, read facts about the places that go through or are going to. Your child could also draw pictures of different scenery or landscapes that he or she sees along the way. We bought a children’s atlas and read a few facts about each state we went through during our drive cross country. Tim loved learning about each new place!

9. Collect brochures, handouts, or information sheets about sites that you visit along the way or about your destination. You and your child could create your own travel brochure for that place or you could read more information about your travel site to your child.

10. You or your child could jot down a list or questions that your child has about the place in which you are travelling. You could check out some books at the library when you get back or research the answers online to answer your child’s questions. Tim loved visiting the Grand Canyon in Arizona and we were able to find some books at the local library to read to him because he was interested in learning more about it.