Shopping for a car is always an exciting experience. It has the potential to impact your life if only in small ways such as how much you spend on gas, how frequently you need tune-ups and what parts are likely to give out first. Because of this, many headaches can come with it. Due to greater affordability, more people choose used cars. Using a used car search engine can greatly reduce the stress that comes with choosing. However, once you have your vehicle, other forms of stress arise. Family trips, for instance, can be very exhausting with kids screaming, fighting, needing to use the bathroom or needing to eat, complaining of boredom, or just being difficult in general. How do you keep them entertained on long trips without driving yourself crazy? If this is your concern, always remember the ‘big five’.

Though it can be difficult to get some kids to read a book, it is a quiet, enriching way to keep your child entertained. Very small children may prefer a coloring book. Picture books work well for some but the older ones are more difficult to satisfy. If they are not the type to proactively read, telling them to read a book will not go over too well. However, it is hard to go wrong with music. If they have a CD player or MP3 player, they can listen to their own music. Most pre-teens and teenagers are content with music for a while. If they have a smart phone (a touch-based, web-enabled cell phone), they can entertain themselves as these typically have 3G Internet and games.

One classic form of entertainment is playing games. There are a number of games you can play in the car, a favorite being I-Spy. Provided you are not driving Highway-2 cross country through miles and miles of grassy fields and nothing else, there are always a variety of objects to make the game interesting. Other in-car games include counting cars of a specific color or using license plates to make words.

If your family cannot afford fancy gadgets like smart phones, portable game devices can often be had for reasonable prices. Though the newer, cutting-edge models may prove too expensive, you can get older models, such as the Nintendo Gameboy Advance or SP, at used hobby shops or game stores, often for thirty dollars or less.

If you are looking to include the whole family and cannot get them to play games, you can watch a movie together excluding the driver, of course. Though portable DVD players can be a little pricey, you can hunt around and usually find a good deal. It is worth investing in because these can be used over and over again and can keep the whole family entertained provided they can agree on a movie. Also, instead of listening to music on a personal device, you can listen to your car radio or CD player.

Lastly, there is always singing along in the car. Even though most older kids will raise their eyebrows or roll their eyes at this, you may be able to entertain younger children this way or you can always shake it up by singing along to more modern, popular songs that your family enjoys.

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