7 Engaging Travel Toys for Elementary Schoolers (No Screens!)

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As some of you know, my 8-year-old switched to a new gymnastics gym a few months ago. The new place is amazing but it's also a lot farther away than I'd like, which means he's now spending an extra hour a day in the car at least three times a week for practice.

And he would play on my phone for ALL of that time if I let him.

Luckily, I gathered a collection of fun things we already owned and a few that his grandma happened to give us at just that right time that have occupied him for hours in the car before he even thought to ask me for my phone. With the holidays and possibly some road trips coming up for all of you, I wanted to share them!

Paint By Sticker for Kids

I'm still shocked by how long my kids will quietly focus on this book. The pages are thick and good quality; it goes a lot of places with us and isn't worn and tattered like most things around here (including me). There are 10 pictures in the book which doesn't sound like a lot, but my kids have been working on it for months and still aren't finished with it. My 8-year-old takes it with him on car rides and my fidgety 12-year-old brings it to church so she doesn't jump out of her skin while sitting still and listening. One caveat: this book isn't the best for kids under 6, who will probably have a hard time with the smaller stickers.

Shashibo Shape-Shifting Cube

When my mom sent me a link to one of these last Christmas and asked if I thought my kids would like it, I shrugged and said "Maybe." I thought it would be a novelty they'd get tired of quickly, but they literally loved their new Shashibo cube to death (it eventually frayed at the edges after being played with daily for over a year). It was well worth the investment, and I think everyone in the house picked it up and played with it sometimes, even my husband and I. When we're totally stumped on a birthday gift for one of the kids' friends, we've sometimes given Shashibo cubes, since they're something unique and different that works for both boys and girls from any age, 6 to teenager.

Word Search Books

Good old word searches. My kids do lots of them at school already, but I guess when you've got your own book it just feels special, so as long as I bring a pencil in the car they're happy to work on the next puzzle for 20-30 minutes. Here's one on Amazon for kids ages 8-10 and another for ages 10-12 with 100 themed puzzles each, but honestly you can walk into any dollar store and find a word search book your elementary schooler would probably be delighted with.

Sudoku Books

Any Sudoku book will keep my math-loving 3^rd and 5^th graders occupied for hours. (If I were to argue with them, I'd point out that Sudoku isn't arithmatic but pattern recognition, but I won't because they're so happy with it.) As far as puzzle books go, I prefer ones like this one that have multiple difficulty levels, because kids can skip around depending on how deeply they feel like thinking that day, multiple siblings can use it, and nobody gets bored or frustrated with a book that's all too easy or way too hard.

Travel Tangram Puzzles

When I was in elementary school, I remember bringing home a set of Tangrams and spending a lot of time playing with it. Part of the fun of parenting is introducing your kids to your old favorites, but I especially like these because of the magnetic backs of the pieces! They're great to play with in the car. The kids can do whatever they want, or they can open up the spiral flip-book and copy the designs. My only suggestion is to get a big Ziploc bag to store everything together; the manufacturer apparently didn't think of a good way to keep it all contained between uses and you don't want to lose pieces.

Rand McNally Kids' Road Atlas

This Rand McNally Kids' Road Atlas been one of my kids' favorites for a while. Every page features a different state with various maps, facts, activities, and puzzles on each one. It's really well-designed for kids, especially ones who love maps, geography, or state capitals. My 8-year-old loves to flip through it in the car on the way to gymnastics and back (bring a pencil!), but if you're taking a cross-country drive or flight soon you should probably bring a copy of this along because this book was definitely made for it.

Cubebot Micro

This little 4" tall robot was a stocking stuffer for one of my older kids years ago, and it has since passed down to the younger siblings and my 8-year-old currently likes to play with it as we drive. The infinitely positionable cubebots come in 16 different colors (ours is neon green) and are beautiful in their simplicity: they're just cubes and elastic cords, no batteries or breakable parts. And they're made of wood, not plastic, which means ours is still around and hasn't cracked yet from being thrown and tossed by our boys.

I'm not exactly anti-screen, but given the choice I'd rather that the kids go offline in search of things to do for fun in their free time. Especially now that they're in school, where they're using tablets and Chromebooks all the time for educational purposes anyway. These activities have kept my 8-year-old and his siblings busy in the car now that we're driving more than we used to, and I hope they will for yours on your next car trip, too!

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7 Quick Takes about the Human Warranty, Things A.I. Won't Do for Love, and Decorations that Go Way Beyond My Skill Set

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

In third grade, my kids' school does a project where each student designs and 3D prints their own custom keychain with their name on it. 

So when my youngest boy came home and said "Mom, I made a keychain!" I thought I knew what I was going to be seeing until I looked closer:

"DUCKZ"

You can probably tell, but the kid has a slight obsession with stuffed ducks and duck-themed toys. 

—2—

Phillip continues to have a rough time. He has a "bad shoulder" (as we now refer to it) from swinging off a rope swing in July, a mysterious foot/ankle sprain that is still giving him trouble from August, and then I gave him COVID at the beginning of September which was rough for him. Then a few days ago, his back started hurting for no discernible reason.

"What did you do to hurt your back, Daddy?" the 12-year-old asked.

"I got old," he answered.

I've always joked that the human body warranty runs out at 40, but I guess it's actually 44 so that's what I have to look forward to in a few years.

—3—

I've been thinking a lot lately about some bigger home improvements I'd like to make, and I have a question: HOW?!?

How does any real person have enough money to pay professionals to design/build anything on their home, or conversely, how does an actual person find enough time to DIY a major project? Either option just doesn't seem like it logistically works. 

I thought about it for a while, and decided that my best course of action is to do nothing right now. If you need me, I'll be enjoying the fall colors from my dilapidated deck under the illusion that building a louvered pergola someday in our spare time is a legitimate possibility.

—4—

Gemini, Google's AI model, sent me a text: "Chat with me to draft messages, brainstorm ideas, plan events or simply have a fun conversation."

Phillip is always playing with AI, so I jokingly asked it to do a task for me:

Blech. It was too much even before the heart emojis.

Anyway, Phillip decided to one-up me with his preferred AI, Claude. Only apparently Claude is more judicious about meddling in other people's love lives:

That last sentence! It's like getting verbally spanked by an AI: "Write your own love letter, you cretin!"

—5—

As part of our new budgeting effort, we talked to the kids about using energy at home and how they can help. We put a jar in the kitchen and every time they turn off the lights on their way out of a room, they can add a button. Every shower under 10 minutes (15 for the girls) is worth five buttons. 

Yes, they immediately found the loophole of flickering the lights on and off like a strobe light, as well as the clever "turn the lights off on our siblings and act like it was all in the name of conservation" trick. 

But overall, it's working! 

(Actually, I suspect it's mostly one child who's going around turning the lights off after all of the siblings, but as long as the jar gets filled, I guess everyone is happy in the end.)

When they fill up the jar, we're watching The Princess Bride.

The other day I caught my 10-year-old putting a button in the jar, doing a fist pump, and yelling, "Energy conserved!" like a superhero. (I think he's actually imitating this character.)

—6—

On Sundays after church, my younger kids have been doing these Draw With Me videos on a YouTube channel called Gospel for Kids. 

This week they picked "city on a hill."

I really, really love the format of these videos. The kids are keeping their hands busy and their minds engaged, but at the same time they're listening attentively to the artist explaining the gospel as it relates to whatever they're drawing at the moment. It's such an amazing way to teach.

Some of the content is specific to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but I think people of any Christian denomination can find plenty for their kids to enjoy here. I also like their animated video series a lot. 

—7—

This week, our church youth group put on a talent show that we've done for the last few years. The girls supply the talents and the refreshments, and they invite the older women in the congregation (ages 65 and up) to be our special guests and audience. It's a small but special gathering.

Decorating is definitely not my talent, so I texted the other youth leaders a few days beforehand asking if they had any fall decor for the centerpieces, thinking we could just plop a couple of pumpkins on the tables or something.

One of the other women texted me this picture a few minutes later and asked, "How about this?"

Oh, you know, just a little something I threw together. Because I'm Martha Stewart and I'm also a wizard.

You guys, she made three of them. And teamwork made the dream work: the talent show turned out to be a really nice event, complete with lots of positive comments on the centerpieces.

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7 Quick Takes about Jalepeño Jelly, Getting My Self-Improvement Straight from the Dump, and Disappearing Dish Drying Racks

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

This post includes affiliate links, which means that I receive a small referral commission when you buy something through these links at no extra cost to you. Now you know, and I won't get sued.

—1—

For a themed luncheon at church, everyone was supposed to bring a dish starting with their first initial. I started thinking the night before about what to bring (something complicated like jambalaya = no) and realized that jello would be, like, the easiest thing ever. But it needs to set overnight, and I didn't have any in the house.

Do you hear what I'm saying? I'm telling you that I can't even get it together enough to bring  jello to a social function.

So I did the next easiest thing I could come up with, which was jalapeño jelly to put on crackers with cream cheese.

Realized later that juice would have been even easier, but you live and learn I guess.

I felt better when the other "J" at the lunch (my friend Jeanne) brought a salad and billed it as "Jeanne's chicken salad."

—2—

Phillip and I have been talking about our budget, and since we had so many expenditures over the summer, we decided to do a no-spend September (and October, since September is halfway over).

We'll buy essentials only, and explained to the kids that we won't be taking them out for ice cream, renting movies, or buying them stuff they don't strictly need. We don't do a lot of that anyway so the news was mostly met with a shrug, but the 10-year-old exclaimed, "Does that mean I can't play indoor soccer this winter??"

I had to laugh because that kid has sports in his DNA. Recently, he told me completely out of the blue, "I love sports. I couldn't imagine my life without them."

"What sports?"

"Any sports."

"Watching or playing them?"

"Both."

"What do you like about sports?" This was a genuine question, because I hate sports and can't think of anything more boring to watch or less fun to do.

"I like running around with my friends and chucking a ball."

"Why?"

"I don't know... sometimes I have too much energy in my arms and legs and it feels good to get it out."

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the best explanation of a boy that I've ever heard.

Sadly, we will not be streaming any sports channels for him during No-Spend September/October, but luckily we can watch Thursday night football on Amazon Prime which we already paid for earlier this year, so he should be able to soldier through the next 6 weeks.

—3—

Our local dump has an area called the swap shop, where you can take or leave almost anything. I saw this self-improvement workbook there and brought it home, which is totally fine because it cost $0. 

Has one note written inside it, that's it. Apparently the person who previously owned it didn't need much self-improvement.

The book has different sections for home, health, budget, personal development, relationship, and self-care. I haven't looked at all of it yet, but I started with the budget section (hence the no-spend experiment) and it seems like a pretty good tool so far. And it's not too... self-helpy, if you know what I mean. It just has a lot of good prompts to get you thinking about a topic and making a plan for action.

The only thing I don't understand is why it says STICKER JOURNAL in all caps on the cover like I'm 8 years old and that would be a major draw for me. The stickers aren't even relevant to the book.

(Remember the luncheon earlier this week? There, I saw a sticker on Jeanne's water bottle with flames that say "I was told there would be a handbasket." I would totally use that one if it was in the book, but unfortunately I didn't see it.)

—4—

On their way back to college, my 18- and 20-year-olds were laughing all the way through the airport because every ad we passed had to name-drop A.I. in one way or another.

Elevate your game with AI. 

With AI-driven solutions to fit your needs. 

Harnessing the power of AI to completely AI your AI.

Okay, the last one was not real but it felt like it. Then I was picking up a prescription at CVS today and saw this board game: 

Pictionary vs. AI. Of course.

I have no idea if it's any good. In fact, I read the reviews and it sounds like the A.I. is terrible which probably adds to the playability of this game. But seriously, is there any product that can not have an A.I. tie-in?

—5—

Since returning from bringing my girls to college on September 1st, there's been at least one kid home sick from school every single day for two weeks (COVID was cycling through the family.) 

We finally got better and everyone went back to school on Monday... for two days. On Wednesday morning my son called me from the nurse's office, then came home and threw up all day. 

Time for Round 2. I just got my flu shot and went off my immunosuppresants, so bring it on.

—6—

This week my friend has been out of town and I've been going over to feed her cat, and also doing a little bit of cleaning each time to surprise her when she gets home. She recently lost her mom (and is actually out of town for the funeral) and that's when chores like cleaning go straight to the bottom of the "What does it even matter?" pile. So this is something I can do so she has one less monkey on her back.

I think we should all clean each other's houses instead of our own because it's WAY more satisfying, probably because you don't have to watch your kids immediately trash it and undo all your hard work to your face. When you clean someone else's home, in your mind their place just stays nice forever. 

—7—

On the advice of The Minimal Mom, I got rid of our eyesore dish drying rack on the kitchen counter. I've ignored her suggestions for a long time because I thought I'd totally hate drying each dish by hand and putting it away as they get washed, but so far I don't. 

In fact, I'm actually loving not waking up every morning to an overflowing mountain of clean dishes that all the kids are "too busy" to help put away as they're rushing around getting ready for school.

I suppose I have to put the dishes away either way, but without the drying rack the counter inbetween looks like this:

Instead of like this:

Imagine that this is an overwhelming mountain of clean dishes.

I'm going to give it a week or two before making a final decision, but so far I really like it. Even the kids say it's not bad, which is not at all what I expected them to say. I just need to figure out certain things that we store with the lids on, so they really need to be super-dry and I'm not sure the towel is doing as thorough as drip drying.

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7 Quick Takes about Nighttime Laundry Folding, Narcissistic Birds, and the Most Satisfying Way to Dispose of a Mess That's Driven You Crazy for Years

It's 7 Quick Takes! How was your week?

—1—

I usually wear socks to bed at night, but wake up with them on the floor so apparently I get hot during the night and take them off.

The other night, I went to bed in socks like always, and woke up in the morning clutching them in my hand, with the elastic of one sock rolled over the other like before you put them in the drawer.

I was folding my socks in my sleep, you guys.

—2—

My 10-year-old needed specific family pictures for a school project, so we were looking through our photo library and stumbled across an old video I took when he was a toddler. 

We'd gone running at the school track, where each lane is painted with a big, bold number. The toddler was hopping from number to number, first pointing his chubby finger at each one and asking, "Which one is that?" 

That went on for a while until he clumsily flung himself into Lane 5 and asked, "Where is four?" 

"Right there," I said, pointing at the next lane.

He pointed waaaay in front of him. "There??"

"No, right in front of you."

With a face of abject confusion, he waddled in a circle and looked behind him. With some direction, he found Lane 4 and continued hopping all the way to Lane 1, where he misjudged the last hop and fell over. 

It's hard to put into words exactly how much I loved being a stay-at-home mom and being able to dedicate my life to those ordinary, magical moments, but that video did a pretty excellent job of showing it. That period of my life was an absolute privilege.

—3—

My 8-year-old tells me he wants to be corn for Halloween. As in, a corn on the cob. 

I'm a little bit at a loss for how to DIY a costume, but I'm trying to think of some way we can create the general idea of corn by spraypainting bubble wrap yellow and using a green hoodie somehow. Ideas?? 

—4—

Our pet parakeet Pringles got a new mirror, after having pecked at the hanger of her old one and destroying it. Recently I mentioned this to my animal-loving friend Bev and she gave me her former cockatiel's mirror, which she's kept for years and hasn't been able to part with.

Pringles LOVES it. She spends half her day with her forehead literally touching the mirror and singing to herself.

What would life be like with so much self-confidence that your favorite activity is point-blank staring at yourself?

—5—

My 10-year-old came home with a "fun" math worksheet that they can work on at their leisure throughout the school year to see how much they can get done.

The assignment is to make 100 equations that equal 1 through 100, using only the number four exactly four times. I asked him to show me an example and he showed me the one that equals 7:

√4 + 4 + 4⁄4 = 7

Apparently, fifth grade has gotten a lot harder since I was a kid.

He worked on it obsessively all night, even through dinner, and is about 2/3 of the way done on the first day. And now that I think about it, this was the same kid in the video who had such a hard time identifying the number 4 on the track. So parents, take heart.

—6—

As a stay-at-home mom, the house is my office and I'm free to declutter the living areas of the house as I like. But Phillip's workshop area in the basement is "his" and it's a nightmare. 

Usually I'm okay with closing the door and letting him merrily do his packrat thing, but lately I've had to go searching for a can of touch-up paint or a tool and I can hardly walk in there. See this video for a good explanation of his thought process:

One day my patience snapped, and I rage cleaned his workshop for an hour or so, vacuuming up sawdust and throwing away obvious trash and putting away some of the 37 pencils he was stashing down there because he grabs a new one for every project. 

When he came home from work I was having a backyard bonfire with one (not all, just one) of his bins of scrap wood. Technically, could I have asked him to drop it off at the dump? Yes, and he would've gotten around to it eventually. But it was faster and way  more therapeutic to haul it out into the yard and cackle as it goes up in flames.

—7—

Having older kids is wild. When you go out, they're old enough to stay home by themselves so when you get home you never know what they'll be doing. They could be playing or fighting or reading a book or waiting by the door to scare the crap out of you like this:

It's quite a ride.

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7 Quick Takes about Coming Home, a House Full of Invalids, and Literal Birdbaths

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

I did the math and I've been gone for 16 out of the last 60 days, helping with church summer camps for the teenagers, going home for a family funeral, and helping the oldest kids move in at college out of state.

While that's happened, Phillip has held down the fort here while simultaneously taking zero days off his full-time job. Everyone has stayed alive and they even had fun (he took the kids to the beach, the skate park, mountain biking, and running) but all other non-essentials for survival have been nonexistent. 

Practicing the piano, doing household chores, and showering regularly have become optional. Last time I was here, I distinctly remember a 'no-eating-in-the-living-room' rule, but nevertheless the day after I got back I watched my 10-year-old plop down on the sofa with a jar red pasta sauce and a spoon. THAT'S NOT EVEN A REAL SNACK.

Phillip asked me, "Are you appalled, or does it feel good to know that you're needed?"

I thought about it for a moment. "Both."

—2—

Unfortunately, I brought home COVID from my latest trip. Some of us never got sick at all, some of us just felt a little crummy, and Phillip spent a day wishing for death. 

The "man cold" is not a factor here, because Phillip never complains about being sick. In fact, if he utters a single word about physical discomfort, you should say your last goodbyes because it means he's probably dying soon.

—3—

Exhibit A: I came home to this on Saturday. Phillip had twisted his ankle which resulted in this giant bruise that went around his entire foot, from his toes to his ankle.

Doesn't really show in the picture, but the whole middle is a lovely greenish color.

Even with his foot like this, and barely able to put weight on it, Phillip was 100% going to go on a work trip this week. Until that is, he got COVID from me which maybe makes it a good thing. Now that we're over 40 and don't heal so readily, injuries that don't get enough rest are just going to hang around and plague us for the rest of our lives.

—4—

Phillip briefly wondered if he'd broken his foot (I would characterize it as more curious than concerned) so I did a little Googling on his behalf:

The last bullet point was very helpful. I can imagine how you might hurt your foot, look down and see that it looks like one of those cartoon ham hocks with the bone sticking out, and still not realize exactly what the problem was.

—5—

So basically I've spent the last several days taking care of invalids and putting the house back in order, and it's odd to say but that's my happy place. 

It's not exactly exciting to regale people with stories of how I'm getting quotes to fix our cracked counter and figuring out where the heck our new insurance will cover a mammogram this fall, but I'm good at being the administrative linchpin of the home and it feels good to be back on the job.

—6—

We have a large garden bed filled with Siberian irises that is sadly overgrown. I went out there three days ago with the simple mission to weed it, but the more I looked at it the more I realized it was in desperate need of some major help.

Apparently you're supposed to thin and divide irises every 2 to 3 years, and I haven't done that in the 14 years we've lived here. 

A work in progress.

Luckily, I've been assured that irises are almost impossible to kill. Let's hope that's true because if anyone can manslaughter a plant, it's me.

—7—

My 12-year-loves shopping. I've noticed her making a conscious effort in the last year to stop making impulse purchases, but the thing about her having a pet is that there are all kinds of cute pet supplies online and HOW DO YOU SAY NO TO THAT? 

Her latest find is this birdbath on Amazon and I cannot handle how cute it is. It even works: it's battery-operated and recycles the water from the tub through the showerhead up above.

Admit it: a bird taking a bath in a literal bathtub is what you needed to see today.

Pringles was extremely suspicious of this new addition to her cage, but we've caught her in the tub at least once since it was introduced, so baby steps. Still working on her trust issues with the water spraying from the showerhead, but at least we can turn that part on and off until she's ready.

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