It’s half term! You’ll probably be driving somewhere at some point with the children in the car! Good luck…

To help we asked Sainsbury’s (this isn’t a sponsored post, by the way) to come up with some great ways to keep the kids (and more importantly, you) amused while on the road.

With portable entertainment technology coming on leaps and bounds, long car journeys with the children needn’t be the mind-numbingly dull affairs they once were.

But while it certainly helps, you don’t necessary need the latest gadgetry to keep the kids entertained and get safely from A to B, without the tetchiness and tantrums so often associated with long family car journeys. We’ve put together our top five tips for in-car sanity.

1) In-car movies. Portable DVD players are God’s gift to parents everywhere. Allowing the kids to watch movies in the car keeps them quiet (particularly if you also invest in a set of headphones!), happy and entertained for up to three hours at a time. Many manufacturers now make screens that are designed to attach to the back of the front headrests for the ultimate in-car viewing, but if you want something a bit more versatile then tablet computers with downloaded movies can also do the trick. Plus if you’re generous and give each child their own machine there will be no arguments about which film to watch. Unless they all want to watch the same film. Or someone’s batteries run out first.

2) A good book. By encouraging your children to read, you’ll be helping with their learning and development. They don’t need batteries, they’re not noisy and they’re easy to carry around – perfect! Try using your in-car time to get them reading, and revel in the peace and quiet while feeling smug about your superior parenting skills! Cars are much better balanced nowadays making motion sickness much less common. But if you’re worried get them used to reading on shorter journeys before embarking on a six-hour marathon.

3) Games consoles. Yes, portable games consoles have injected a new lease of life into boring car journeys. Just plug in their favourite game, attach the all-important headphones and they’ll zone out into a completely different world of fun. Hours of entertainment, literally at their fingertips.

4) Old fashioned games. Yes, on really long car journeys there will come a time when you have to resort to playing games, for the sake of their eyes if nothing else. ‘I spy’ gets a tad boring after all of five minutes so instead try ‘yellow car’: keep an eye out for yellow cars and yell if you’ve seen one – the first one to yell wins one point. Or ‘alphabet’ – the first person to spot all letters of the alphabet, in order, wins (letters can be see on road signs, registrations plates – anywhere they can be easily read). We also love splitting into teams – one looking for, say, red cars and the other team looking for cars and caravans. A bit of healthy competition really helps keep boredom at bay. And making up stories is fun. Simply take turns to say one line each, and make your turn as silly as possible for maximum giggles.

5) Navigation. It’s amazing how much fun you can have with a map! Get the kids to close their eyes for a few minutes, so that they can’t see any road signs or clues. Then, when they open them, they’ve got to use the map to spot your location. You can also get them to keep a log every half an hour Star Trek style, by giving you an update and putting a cross on the map (‘Captain’s Log number 3… We are at junction 7 on the M5’). Chucking a compass into the mix is also a good idea. Ask children to help you navigate and they’ll really enjoy saying, ‘NOOOOO! We’re now going East and we’re supposed to be going WEST!!’

6) Have a chat. If all else fails, you could always use the opportunity to have a conversation. Choose your topics carefully to keep everyone interested. A good idea is to get everyone to think for five minutes about the most interesting piece of information they know – be it a fact, something you’ve done, or something you’ve seen. Then give each person a chance to share their interesting thing, and ask them questions about it for five minutes. This is really good for large families, as everyone is included and listened to.

Peace of mind

Keeping the kids entertained takes the stress out of your journey – so does knowing you have adequate car insurance cover.

Everyone has a parenting story to share – why not share yours?

TV production company ITN are looking for new mums and dads to share their stories about pregnancy or living with newborns. They want to film a series of short stories that will be available at the touch of a button to give new parents advice and guidance 24 hours a day.

Want to get involved?

• Are you available for filming on Thursday 9 February in North London?
• Are you either a new parent or pregnant?
• Are you happy to be filmed for illustrative purposes – ie. you won’t actually have to talk just use actions, such as drink a glass of water, in order to illustrate that taking in fluids can help combat nausea

Transportation costs and food will be provided, plus pre-filming make-up.

If this sounds like your kind of thing and you’d like to help make pregnancy and new motherhood easier for other parents, get in touch with:

Claudia Guerretta by email at claudia.guerretta@itn.co.uk