Creative Traveling

As you already know, entertaining children (of any age) is a challenge when you are spending hours in the car. Earlier in the month, we went on vacation with Tim’s parents to Ocean Isle Beach, NC, and packing the kids’ toys and snacks to keep them happy in the car took just as much thought and work as packing for our time at the beach itself. I tried to think of a way to engage Ava for longer than 5 minutes at a time, so I decided to figure out a way for her to be able to color.

I started by shopping around and I found this plastic, purple, RoseArt clipboard at Target. It even came with sets of crayons, markers, and colored pencils. This clipboard pops open to store supplies inside – perfect for what I was aiming to accomplish. Inside the clipboard, I stashed crayons, markers, colored pencils, stickers, construction paper, and a coloring book!

The only thing missing was a holder to keep crayons/markers/pencils handy for her to reach and use and to potentially save the car’s upholstery from lost, melting crayons. So, I made one. I already had the felt, the needle and thread, and the velcro I needed. I simply folded the felt to create the long pocket, and then stitched it into mini pockets to fit crayons. Velcro attaches it to the side of the clipboard (just below where the clipboard opens).

This was the perfect size for Ava, and it met all my criteria for a creative traveling station that effectively engaged Ava and kept things simple and organized for me.