Mummy, are we home yet?

With over 200 hundred miles yet to travel, this question from the little darlings in the back can irritate the nerves unless you take some corrective.
On the outward journey the question was ‘Mummy, are we there yet?’  The vacation home was still many miles away but the kids couldn’t understand what was taking so long This certainly annoys the older kids and, tension within the confines of the car can start to rise.
So, what can be done to calm the nerves of the tormented driver who has quite enough to do maintaining her concentration on the busy highways?

Distractions are a must but not for the driver- for the kids.
The ‘I Spy’ game is good for maybe half an hour although I remember one episode that lasted a lot longer thanks to a not so clever mix-up by my six year old.

She spied something beginning with w s and it probably won't surprise you that windscreen was the answer. But windscreen it wasn’t and many miles later nobody got the answer. And what do you know, she had mistakenly spelt steering wheel the wrong way around She was not too popular for a while after that.
What happens when everyone gets tired of this game? One option is to play Charades, and this can be good fun for a while too.
So, what is the long term solution to prevent four energetic kids from getting bored?

I read an article about audio books on the internet which gave me some ideas. We had to dig a bit into our hard earned cash but it was worth it. We bought each of them an MP3 player, downloaded some children’s audiobooks from the net and as Shakespeare might say, ‘the rest is silence’.
The great thing about audiobooks is that you can load several of them onto each MP3 player so that there is enough material there for both journeys, there and back. Peace for hours for a small price.

We had toyed with the idea of burning some audiobooks onto CD’s and letting everyone hear the same story, but, this was bound to spark another row. “I don’t like Shakespeare, I don’t like Superman, I don’t like Roald Dahl etc..etc…’
I would advise you to allow the children some choice here too, so that they do not feel forced to listen to something they might not be too interested in.
It even makes sense to look ahead to the English curriculum of your local schools for inspiration. Huckleberry Finn seems to be an evergreen.
In years to come, it’s possible to turn idle time into productive time by listening to classic literature or foreign language audiobooks on the way to school.

There really is a very wide choice of titles now on audiobooks, for example, nursery rhymes, action and adventure, ghost stories, romance, animals etc…Enough to keep the entire family occupied