Road Trip Tip #1: The Bins

For our 19-hour (give or take) two-day road trip, I tried something new for the kids. I bought these plastic bins from Target and each kid had his/her own bin in the back of the minivan. They were a little on the big side, but the big kids' bins stacked on top of each other in the way-back seat of the van -- the bins sat in between them. Truck had his own bin on the passenger seat beside him.

Here is what I put in them:
For the 8.5 year old boy: trip journal, library books, iPad, iPods, headphones, snack container. My minimalist.
For the 5 year old girl: trip journal, bag of pencils/crayons (to share with big brother), stickers, index cards, envelopes (for writing notes to friends), library books, DVDs, headphones (one DVD player was mounted to the headrest in front of her), snack container. She used it all. Her trip journal is FABULOUS.
For the almost 2 year old boy: three new sets of flash cards (one Elmo, one realistic animals, one Eric Carle animals), two new play phones, a play camera, a baggie full of play jewelry, a comb and a mirror, a couple favorite books (totally uninterested in library books AKA ones he had not read a thousand times), mini Magnadoodle, baby doll with pacifier (pacifier = very important; we spent a lot of time putting it in, taking it out), snack container. Flash cards got A LOT of action, mainly involving handing them to me.