“Are we there yet?”

“How much longer?”

“I have to go to the bathroom.”

“I’m hungry.”

Ah, the sounds of summer. If you’re like most East Orlando parents, then at some point this season you’ll be packing the bags, rounding up the family and heading down the road toward another fun-filled family vacation. But, before you get there, you have to get there.

Keeping the kids highly entertained at a low price is no easy feat - but it can be done.

“We go on trips about seven times per year, half of which are car trips lasting a few days so there is a lot of driving,” says Sara Au, contributing expert for parenting Web site www.ParentsAsk.com and Waterford Lakes mother of Derek, 7, and Kacey, 6.

Au says that for her children, one of the best strategies for her children and her wallet has been to find activities that engage them rather than those they would passively participate in, such as watching a movie. “I’m against the handheld videogame trend so I’m always looking for new ways to keep the kids actively involved in an activity during the trip,” she says. “Recently I got them a deck of cards and taught them to play Go Fish and, believe it or not, they have been doing that for hours, nonstop, and they absolutely love it.”

The family-friendly game has also created an adverse, but welcome, side effect: laughter. “They are like any other brother and sister with sibling rivalries and teasing, but when they play these games they  laugh and laugh together. It’s so nice to hear them getting along and bonding over something silly like that,” says Au.

Another tip she suggests is bringing a lap desk and plenty of paper. “It allows them to color and create, it’s simple and affordable,” she says.

Lake Nona mother of twin 8-year-old girls, Mary Cachillo, says the lap desk has worked wonders for her as well. “We come up with activities while we’re driving and have the kids draw the first things that come to their mind or draw the back of the car in front of us - it sounds simple but they enjoy interacting with us in the front seats and it keeps their minds going,” she says.

“It’s amazing what a few pieces of paper and some imagination will do,” says Au.

Recently, Au has found that Mad Libs work wonders for her children. “My kids were dying with laughter on a car trip where they first got to try them out,” she says. “It was pretty hilarious for us, too.”

But, perhaps even better than that, according to Au, is that she found her 7-year-old has begun teaching her 6-year-old what nouns, verbs and adjectives are to help the game along. “It’s really a great lesson for both of them because he gets to review and teach while she gets to learn from her big brother instead of a teacher,” she says.

For the Cachillo family, they’ve taken on their own form of Mad Libs where one member of the family will choose a topic and the rest must go around in a circle and build a story, one word at a time, repeating every word from the beginning and adding a new one until they alter the sentence too much from the original.

“It’s challenging for them and for us, but it’s a ton of fun,” says Cachillo. “It helps with their imagination and their memory - ours too.”

If you’re out of active things to do and you need a rest, Au says that sometimes for her children books on tape actually work better than a new DVD at keeping their minds off the road. “It forces them to use their imagination a bit and it keeps them entertained,” she says. “They are usually around 40 minutes and they are far cheaper than buying a ton of new movies for every trip you take.”

Above all, according to Au, the thing to remember when scratching your head for new ideas is to think variety and simplicity. “The best things you can do are often the cheapest as well and they’ll bring you together as a family more than you may think,” she says.

“Get their imagination going and you’ll be surprised at the results,” says Cachillo. “It may take some work on your part, but you need to keep yourself entertained too.”

Article by Corey Gehrold