Look, I’m not going to give you some beautiful story about how we drove to Cornwall in perfect, screen-free harmony while my child quietly studied the local flora.
It was three hours. She asked “are we there yet” roughly four hundred times. I handed over the iPad for the last forty minutes because I was tired and I just wanted to arrive without negotiating with a small terrorist.
But for the first two hours, we didn’t use screens. And compared to our previous trips, where the tablet came out before we even hit the M25, I’m calling it a massive win.
Over the last year I’ve just been throwing things at the wall to see what sticks in the back seat. Some of it was stupid. Some of it worked. Here is the messy, completely unscientific list of what actually kept a six-year-old occupied while I was trying to drive.
1. Just get a clipboard
I know this sounds basic but I didn’t do it for two years. A book on a lap just folds in half. The pencil rolls under the seat. The kid hunches over and complains their neck hurts.
Go to a stationery shop. Buy an A4 clipboard for £2. Clip the book to it. It gives them a flat surface and stops the pages flapping around. It’s a game changer and I’m annoyed I didn’t think of it sooner.
2. Mouth games (for the first 20 mins)
You can’t give them a book straight away. They’re still processing the trauma of leaving the house. They need to talk.
We play “Fortunately / Unfortunately”. I say “We went to the beach.” She says “Unfortunately, the beach was full of spiders.” I say “Fortunately, the spiders were polite.” She says “Unfortunately, they wanted to play football.”
Six-year-olds find this hilarious. Especially the unfortunate parts. It kills about fifteen minutes and requires zero equipment.
I-Spy is dead, by the way. Don’t play I-Spy. They just guess “a car” every single time and then get mad when you say no.
3. The activity book (and why it needs an answer key)
This is where I get genuinely annoyed at most activity books on the market.
You’re doing 70mph on the motorway. Your kid finishes a word search and shouts “Mum, is this right?”
You say “Yes, lovely.”
They say “Did you actually look?”
You didn’t look. You are driving. You are looking at a lorry.
So you say “Yes” anyway. And they know you’re lying. And then they ask you again. And again. And the whole activity collapses because they don’t trust your validation anymore.
This is exactly why we put an answer key at the back of our activity book for 6-7 year olds. It’s not some fancy educational feature. It’s a survival tool. The kid finishes the maze or the word search, flips to the back, checks it themselves, and gets on with the next one. You keep your eyes on the road. Nobody asks you to verify if P-U-M-P-K-I-N is hidden in a grid of eighty random letters.
The book has 80 pages. Mazes, telling the time, spot the difference. The spot-the-difference ones have 8 or 9 differences, not 5, because a 6-year-old finds 5 differences in forty seconds and then throws the book at your headrest.
You don’t have to buy ours, obviously. Any book with answers at the back works. Just make sure it has answers at the back.
4. Stickers (but restricted)
If you give a six-year-old a sheet of 50 stickers in a car, they will peel all 50 in three minutes. They will stick them on the page, the window, their own face, and the back of your neck. Then the sheet is empty and they will cry.
Give them three stickers.
Tell them the rest are for when you stop at the services. They will guard those three stickers like they’re bloody state secrets. They will stare at the page for five minutes deciding where to put one.
5. The envelope
Before we leave, I print a couple of free puzzle pages from our site and put them in a brown envelope. I write “CONFIDENTIAL” on it.
Honestly, the envelope does most of the work. Kids love sealed things. They think it’s top secret. I usually pull this out around hour two when they’re getting properly feral.
I keep the envelopes in the glovebox, which is currently a disaster zone containing a single wet wipe, a petrified cereal bar from Easter, and half a pair of sunglasses. But the kid doesn’t care about the glovebox, they just care about the envelope.
6. The raisin trick
Don’t give them the whole box of raisins. They’ll eat it in four seconds.
Give them exactly five raisins. Tell them they have to eat them one by one. I don’t know why this works, but it takes them an absurdly long time to eat five raisins if you make it a rule. It buys you at least ten minutes of silence. Keep the box in the front seat. If they hold the box, the box will end up on the floor and you’ll be vacuuming raisins out of the footwell for a month.
7. Just rotate it
That’s basically the whole strategy. You don’t give them the bag. You are the gatekeeper.
They get the clipboard for twenty minutes. When they sigh, you take it away and give them the stickers. When the stickers are done, you give them the envelope.
Around the two-hour mark, they will hate everything you offer them. They will hate you. They will hate the car.
This is when you hand over the tablet.
And that’s fine. You got two hours of peace. You didn’t have to verify a word search. Nobody got a sticker stuck in their hair. Take the win, put on a podcast, and just drive the rest of the way.
If you want to test the waters before buying a full book for a trip, grab some free sample pages here. Print them, stick them on a clipboard, and see if your kid actually bothers with them in the back seat.
Stuff People Keep Emailing Me About
What actually works for keeping a 6 year old busy in the car without a screen?
Honestly, it depends on the kid. What worked for us was just not giving them everything at once. You hand things back one at a time. Activity books with answer keys are the main thing, because you’re driving and you can’t check their work. Verbal games for the first bit. Sticker books, but only if you restrict the stickers. And raisins. That’s basically it.
My daughter keeps asking ‘are we there yet’ every few minutes. Any tips?
Stop giving her time estimates. I used to say “about two hours” and then she’d say “you said two hours” forty times. Now I just say “when you see the sea” or “after the big bridge”. Landmarks work better than clocks for six-year-olds. Also, print a map and let her colour the route. It occupies them for at least ten minutes.
Will doing puzzles in the car make my child car sick? She’s prone to it.
It might. My friend’s kid can’t look at a book in a moving car without going pale. If yours is like that, stick to audiobooks or looking-out-the-window games. If they go quiet in that specific, slightly-too-quiet way, take the book away immediately. No maze is worth cleaning vomit out of a car seat. I’ve done it once. Never again.
My son rejects literally everything I hand him in the car. Is it me?
It’s not you. Six-year-olds reject things in cars because the car is the one place they have zero control, and saying “no” is their only weapon. Keep the bag in the front seat. Hand things back one at a time and act like you don’t care if they take it or not. If you seem desperate for them to play with it, they’ll reject it on principle.
Do I actually need a clipboard or is that overkill?
Get a clipboard. A book on a lap in a moving car just folds in half and the pencil rolls under the seat. A clipboard is two quid and fixes everything.
