Road Trip Printables

May 31, 2024 by Sarah White Leave a Comment

It feels like that time of year when people are starting to play and/or go on road trips, so it’s time for a roundup of ideas for things to do in the car.

I’ve shared some printables for roads trips in the past, and the ones in that post we actually used some of when the girl was younger. (She’s 14 now and has no interest in car trip games.)

I recently came across another version of the license plate game from Fox Farm Home, which is fun for the twist of adding silly facts about the states to the listings. For each state you see, color in the state on the map and read the fun fact. (Arkansas’ is that it has the largest ostrich farm in America, which Google tells me isn’t true, but checking that the facts are true adds an extra layer of fun.)

Living Well Mom has ideas for making a full road trip binder for kids, complete with maps and activities in plastic sleeve protectors and a dry-erase marker attached to the binder for easy playing and no random markers rolling around the car. That post has links to a bunch of free printables you can add for I-spy, bingo, license plate game, coloring pages and travel games, but they also sell a road trip bundle that includes journaling pages, bingo, Battleship and a few different I-spy games, including car makes and restaurants.

This truck spotting I spy from National Post is a great one for kids who are obsessed with all kinds of trucks. I also like the car color search from Productive Pete.

About a Mom has another good set of road trip printables that includes a word scramble, I spy, scavenger hunt, journal page, maze and coloring page. Homeschool and Happiness has another great free road trip activity book that includes a maze, word search, tic tac toe blanks, scavenger hunts and more.

Mama Cheaps has a set of printable conversation starters to keep in the car to use during car trips long or short, or when waiting in the car line or in traffic. These are free and each prompt is printed on a circle shape so you can cut them out and store them in a round tin.

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Book Review: Rise Up!

It might seem weird to feature a book about protest movements around the Fourth of July, but as Rise Up! Powerful Protests in American History reminds us, protest is patriotic and part of the very fabric of American life from the beginning.

This picture book, written by history teacher Rachel C. Katz and illustrated by Sophie Bass, tells a rhyming story of how Americans have stood up throughout the nation’s history to protest and spread the word about injustice and unsafe conditions. From the Boston Tea Party to modern movements like the Standing Rock pipeline protests and the Obergefell case, it touches on women’s rights, environmental activism, civil rights, Pride, access for disabled people and more.

The illustrations, often based on historic protest signs and artwork, help tell the stories, while a timeline, map, and overview of each event for further discussion. Readers will learn about Silent Spring and The Jungle, the Memphis Sanitation Workers’ Strike, the Seneca Falls convention, Robert Smalls, the Delano Grape Strike and the movement to un-dam the Klamath River, to name a few.

Each event includes a few bullet points to provide context about what happened, why and what the result was. The book reminds readers that protests are not always effective, or don’t always get the people involved what they want right away (since it took women 72 years to get the right to vote after Seneca Falls, for example).

This book is a great way to introduce kids to the long and proud history of protest movements in the United States and could prompt discussions about current events and things happening that they might want to see changed. It could also be used to start kids researching different protests discussed in the book for further learning. You can talk about how art can educate people and encourage kids to make their own art pieces to educate others about something important to them.

Rise Up! is a great starting point for learning about the history of protest and the effects it has had on American history. The publisher’s website has more resources for teaching with this book at the link below.

About the book: 48 pages, hardcover. Published 2025 by Barefoot Books. Suggested retail price $17.99.

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