This summer, my family took a road trip across the United States. Not a short one. We drove all over the country, and most legs of the trip ran seven to nine hours in the car. If you have ever done a long drive with young children, you know the real question is not the route. It is what on earth will keep them happy back there. For us, the answer, again and again, was coloring.
From the start, my wife and I knew we did not want screens carrying these drives. So we went looking for other options, and coloring quickly became the centerpiece. My boys colored for stretches I would not have believed if I had not watched it happen, and they climbed out of the car creative and calm instead of glazed and cranky. Here is exactly what worked, in case you have a big drive coming up.
Put a supply bin between the car seats
The single best decision we made was simple: a bin of supplies wedged right between the two car seats, within reach of both boys. No handing things back from the front seat. No “I dropped the blue one” every ten minutes. Everything lived in that bin, both kids could reach it, and it kept the whole operation contained instead of scattered across the floor. If you do one thing, do this.
Clipboards are non-negotiable
The trouble with coloring in a car is that there is no table. A loose page on a lap slides around and ends up in the footwell. Clipboards fixed that completely. Each boy had his own, the page clipped down flat, and suddenly they had a stable surface to actually color on. It sounds like a small thing. It made the difference between coloring that lasted five minutes and coloring that lasted an hour.
Washable is a must, and cleanup is easy
Let me be direct about supplies. In a car, washable is not optional. Hands get dirty, marks end up on little fingers and occasionally somewhere they should not, and washable markers and crayons mean all of it wipes away without a fight. Ours cleaned up easily every single time, and I never once panicked about the seats. Buy washable, and you can relax and let them go.
Bring more than one kind of tool
Variety kept things interesting far longer than any single tool would have. We packed both colored pencils and markers, and letting the boys swap between them gave them a little novelty in the middle of a long haul. The surprise hit were the scented markers. My boys thought smelly markers were the greatest invention in human history, and the novelty alone bought us a solid stretch of quiet, happy coloring.
A couple of tool notes from experience: twistable crayons and colored pencils are ideal for the car, because there is no sharpener to fuss with and nothing to snap in half. And for the youngest kids, chunkier crayons are easier to hang onto on a bumpy road.
Keep it fresh to make it last
The real trick to stretching coloring across a nine-hour drive is variety in the pages themselves. When one design lost its shine, a brand new one brought the interest right back. We rotated through all kinds of pages: animals, vehicles, a mandala or two for the quieter moments, favorite themes and characters, so there was always something new to reach for. A thick, varied stack does far more to fill the hours than a few repeats of the same design. Print more than you think you will need, and mix it up.
Coloring was not our only screen-free trick
Coloring did the most work, but it was not the only thing that kept the miles moving. Our sleeper hit was a number guessing game. One person thinks of a number and keeps it secret, everyone else guesses, and after each guess the keeper says higher or lower until someone lands on it. It needs no supplies, it works entirely out loud, and for our two pre-K boys it turned out to be sneaky math practice. To play well, they had to reason about which numbers are bigger and smaller and close in on the answer, which is exactly the number sense they will lean on once they start school. They just thought they were winning a game.
Why we chose coloring over screens
Keeping the screens off was one of the best calls we made. We have all seen what an hour of video does on a long drive: kids climb out glazed and cranky. Coloring did the opposite. It kept my boys’ hands busy and their minds engaged, it left them proud of what they had made and ready to talk about it, and it quietly handed them hours of the fine motor practice that helps with writing later on. That is the difference between passing the time and using it well.
It also opened up conversation, which is half the joy of a road trip. Asking my son about the scene he was coloring, or connecting it to something out the window, turned a quiet activity into a real back-and-forth. Every page on our site includes a Talk About It prompt for exactly this reason, and a long drive is the perfect place to use them.
The gift of a little boredom
Here is what surprised me most, and it had nothing to do with crayons. Without screens to reach for, my boys had to figure out what to do with the empty stretches, and they rose to it. They learned to sit with a little boredom and come out the other side, entertaining themselves instead of waiting to be entertained. That is a real skill, and it is one screens quietly take away.
They also talked. So much more than they usually do. With no glowing screen pulling their attention off in separate directions, my two boys actually turned to each other, invented games, told stories, and bickered and laughed the way brothers are supposed to. And they discovered the simple thrills of the open road, including the great triumph of pumping an arm at a passing truck driver until he blasted his horn. The look on their faces when that horn finally sounded beat anything a screen has ever given them.
Pack a stack before your next drive
If you have a big trip ahead, build yourself a travel coloring kit: a bin between the seats, a clipboard for each child, washable markers and pencils, a scented marker or two for fun, and a thick, varied stack of pages. It got my family through 4,453 miles this summer with our sanity intact, and it might just do the same for yours.
Here are some of the coloring sheets we printed that our kids loved and matched activities they were going to do:
Browse our free printable coloring pages and print a variety pack before you hit the road. Every page is free, and every one includes a conversation prompt for the miles ahead.