How to Spread Kindness With These Kindness Road Trip Activities for Kids

Inside: Spread some kindness on your next road trip with these kindness road trip activities for kids that also fights boredom.

Last Spring Break my family and I took a road trip.

We drove the eight hours from our Chicago suburb to Nashville, Tennessee.

And of course, as on all road trips, we had three major things to plan for: how we get there safely, do we have enough snacks in the car?, and how do we fight the inevitable cries of boredom.

Sure enough, ten minutes after we left our home, my kids were bored.

They were desperate to go on screens and we were desperate not to let them spend the whole eight hours in the car on screens.

So they brought along books to read, projects to work on, journals to write in, and games to play.

We took turns playing DJ. We ate tons of snacks, and we also used the time to spread a little kindness.

As as we made our way through Illinois to Indiana, to Kentucky, and finally to Tennessee, we made and used this Kindness Road Trip Activity.

How to Make Kindness Part of Our Everyday Lives

Kindness is important in our family and we talk about it often.

We use these 60 discussion starters, and these Skittles discussion starters, and this Trash or Kindness Game.

We read books about kindness, books about anti -bullying, and books about being an includer.

We also turn kindness into a game with this Summer Kindness Bucketlist, this Fidget Spinner Kindness, and this Kindness Tic Tac Toe game.

Because kindness is a verb… it’s something we do.

So if we want to make kindness a habit for our kids and find ways to encourage them to speak and act with kindness more often, we have to give them fun opportunities to show their kindness.

And since we were stuck in the car for eight hours, bored, and looking for screen-free ways to entertain ourselves, this Kindness Road Trip Activity was perfect.

How to Use These Kindness Road Trip Activities for Kids

1. Before your next road trip, print out a few or all of these kindness messages (download below).

2. Bring them and some crayons and a mini desk or clipboard with you on your trip.

3. Your kids can color the kindness messages during the trip as an activity to keep them busy and get the signs ready to use.

4. They can also write in messages on the blank speech bubbles with other kind messages they come up with! (remind them to write it big enough for passengers to see).

Here are a few ideas to use if they need inspiration:

Have a safe/fun/good drive!
I love your car!
We’re from [Illinois] too!
How are you?
How’s your drive coming?

Remind them not to add personal information to the signs like the town you’re from.

5. As they pass another car, they can hold up their sign against a closed window so the passengers in the other car can read their message and read it to the driver.

If someone lets your car merge or a truck driver honks their horn for them, they can hold up the ‘Thank you’ message.