This weekend the kids and I will be traveling in the car for 2 days. We're hitching a ride with my parents to a family reunion in Idaho. My parents live in Texas. Which is where we are right now. So we have quite a road trip ahead of us.
So I've been racking my brain to think of different things to help us pass the time. Since my boys really love maps anyway, I thought it would be fun for them to map out our travels as we go. I made them this Road Trip Map.
It was really easy to make.
First I went to Mapquest and put in our starting destination and our ending destination. They give you a handy little map. I took a picture of the screen by hitting the shift+prtscn (print screen) key. I use Picassa, so that's where the print screen showed up. I cropped the picture from the whole screen to just the part of the map I wanted to use. It looked like this:
I wanted to make the picture look like a drawing, so I used the pencil sketch feature in Picassa, to change the map to this:
Now the boys can color in the path as we travel, and color in the states as we go through them.
Then I went to PicMonkey and opened up a random 8x10 image that I had already saved on my computer. Actually, a random image my mom had already saved, since I'm using her computer.
I clicked on the canvas color feature and changed the canvas to white, which gave me a white blank 8x10 image. Then I went to the overlay feature, and selected my pencil sketched map. It looked like this:
Then I increased the size of the overlay till just the part of the map with our path was showing. The rest of it was hanging over the edge of the picture. It looked like this:
Then I used one of the star overlays to add stars all along our path. I put the same color star at the bottom so I could add little phrases. Did you know that if you right click on the overlay you can duplicate it? As much as I use PicMonkey, I just discovered that little trick. It's pretty handy.
Then I used the text feature and added words to go with each star. At some of the stars the boys will get to open little treat bags with dollar store surprises. At a couple of other ones they'll get to buy a treat from the gas station. And then I also plan on renting a movie we haven't seen from the Redbox before we go, to watch on the first day. I love Redbox because you can return at ANY Redbox. So we can return the movie when we stop for the night and pick out a new movie for the next day. Because yes, we are electronic junkies. Especially on long road trips.
And that's it. Now I just need to print it. Twice. Because of course sharing the same one would be a nightmare.
So wish us luck this weekend. We will need it.
Also, who has ideas for a toddler on a road trip? What do I DO with her? Somebody please give me some good ideas. I'm kind of stressing about it. . .
