Carschooling: Over 350 Entertaining Games & Activities to Turn Travel Time into Learning Time

by Diane Flynn Keith

Turn Your Kids into "Road Scholars"
Your children's education and future are two of your primary concerns. Combine that with the fact that you spend loads of time in the car with them going from here to there, and your family is perfect for carschooling!
Carschooling is all about turning travel time into learning time. Created especially for kids ages 4 to 7, inside there's something fun for everyone with games, group activities, suggested resources and audiobooks, journaling ideas, and more. Kids will love the countless road-worthy games, such
·Dashboard Decimal Drills and Rock 'n' Roll Multiplication Tables
·Eighteen-Wheeler Chemistry, Windshield Entomology, and Road-Cut Geology
·Drive-By History and Glove Compartment Geography
·Rest Stop Olympics and Car Seat Calisthenics
·And many other fun and educational activities!
This crafty brain-building book transforms your family's same ol' road trips into journeys down the information superhighway. Going for a spin will never be the same!
"You'll be staggered by the ingenuity and imagination captured in these pages. What a brain bath!" — John Taylor Gatto, author of Dumbing Us Down and The Underground History of American Education
"A veritable roadmap for learning from one of the country's learning experts." — Heather Frederick, publisher, Audio Bookshelf
"Fun, educational, and takes the whine out of drive time." — Rebecca Kochenderfer, senior editor and cofounder of Homeschool.com and coauthor of Homeschooling for Success

Genres: Education, Nonfiction

360 pages, Paperback

First published September 24, 2002

Reviews

[Alicia Bayer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just stumbled on this review I wrote for my online homeschooling column back in 2015 so I thought I'd post it here:

I was excited to get a review copy of Diane Flynn Keith's newly revised Carschooling book. I've been a subscriber to Keith's Clickschooling email service for several years and have always been a fan of her site and her many services for homeschoolers. I even got a chance to see her speak at this year's Minnesota Homeschool Alliance conference, and greatly enjoyed her speech.

That said, I was initially disappointed when I opened the book for the first time. Why? I brought it along on a 30 minute car trip to the grocery store, planning to just open it up to a random page and do fun, educational activities with my kids.

It turns out that this is not really a "open the book to a random page" kind of book. For one thing, each chapter actually lists supplies needed. Supplies?! For the car? Well, yes. Some of the activities require simple tools and materials. Also, you could say there was just too much of a good thing and I easily got overwhelmed. I found myself scanning entry after entry and quickly developed carsickness.

No, this is not just a book of simple activities to play on the road. We already have those in our repertoire, after all. I think most homeschoolers are plenty used to playing ABC games of lists of animals, having impromptu spelling bees and answering made up word problems on the way to the store.

Don't get me wrong -- there are plenty of activities in that vein. They're just updated, more creative versions of those games we're used to in many cases. There are also plenty of activities that don't require any additional materials or preparation. Some of the best ones do require a little bit of preparation, though. The good news is they're worth the trouble!

Carschooling really is like a full curriculum for the car. There are science experiments, physical education activities, math games, geography challenges, foreign language exercises and lots more. Some of the ideas are so creative I couldn't wait to do them with my kids, and the supplies needed (if any) are generally simple and easy to pack for rides.

Here are some examples of activities in the book.

Stretch a balloon over an empty cup as you go up a mountain (you'll need to go up 1000 feet or more) and watch what happens to the balloon. The explanation gives information about how the balloon is like our ears and what's happening.

Sing the "Bottles of Juice on the Wall" song and use math. For instance, "5 bottles of juice on the wall, 5 bottles of juice, you go to the store and buy 3 more, how many bottles of juice on the wall?".

Make crayon rubbings of historical markers you visit.

Do the Skeleton Hokey Pokey. Kids learn the names for their bones and have fun! Here's a sample verse: "You put your right tarsals in, you put your right tarsals out... You do the hokey pokey and give high-fives all around, that's what it's all about."

I found that the perfect way for me to use the book was to browse it at home and put check marks next to entries that looked like fun (you could just as easily use post-it notes for books). I bookmarked the pages of the activities I wanted to do soon with my kids (there were many!) and put the supplies needed in a tupperware box. Just as it's often easier on homeschool moms to loosely plan the day at home than to just wing it, it makes life much easier to have some carschooling ideas already selected before you begin your drive.

It turns out that the book is not what I expected, but much better. The games and activities are arranged by subject and can be tailored to any age. There is additional information on everything from keeping the car organized to avoiding carsickness.

I heartily recommend it to homeschool families with kids of all ages.

We're all really excited to do more of the activities from the book. Now we just need to find a mountain in Minnesota for that balloon experiment...

[Cherie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has lots of great ideas for long car rides and how to make them more educational, but I think most of these are better for slightly older kids than my daughter (5 years old).

[Miriam Schwartz]

This is kind of a cool book. B/c homeschoolers spend so much time shuttling their kids back and forth and use the time to teach their kids in various ways, the author collected a huge number of ideas people had to teach their kids on the road. Did you know, for example, that putting a chicken breast on the car's heater and driving at roughly 60 miles an hour will give you nice, hot, cooked chicken for a dinner on the road? Have you ever given your children a dollar bill to look at and count the number of symbols on it whose parts add up to thirteen (the thirteen colonies)? She gives so many creative ideas of what to do with kids in the car on those long car rides, like listening to available kids' audio magazines -- things I never even knew about until I read this book!

[Sara · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love the idea of this book, but didn't find the ideas to be very practical. Mostly they lacked depth.

The title did inspire me, though, to make sure we use our car time well. Mostly we review the poems from our poetry memorization program. Sometimes I save big conversation for the car when the kids are trapped in their carseats!

[Larisha · Rating 5 out of 5]

A friend recommended this book and as I read I had to keep a notebook nearby because there's so many great great activities and games to help turn travel time in the car into fun and learning time. I got this book from the library but will be purchasing because it's a great resource... what imagination!!

[Amber · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book. We spend a lot of time driving and I use a lot of the ideas. The only problem I had was that a lot wasn't relevant
for me (as a Canadian. Although I adapted them ;)) and most of the books and movies suggested were out of print or not findable :(

[Laurie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tons of smaller ideas to use while driving - whether on short trips or longer ones.

[LaDawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another book I used a lot when I began my homeschooling journey.
Highly recommended for those homeschooling!

[Lisa]

I re-reathis book every summer...great ideas to engage my kids while we spend so many hours in the car.

[Nicole]

Need to buy this book. It has a ton of ideas, way more than I could bookmark or write down.