Mum's brilliant £4 hack to keep kids entertained on car journeys

If you're planning a trip over the school holidays, it can be good to know how to keep the kids entertained in the back of the car. Whether it's going on holiday or spending an hour on the motorway going to visit granny, kids can get really restless.

Birmingham TikToker Emma Roberts - better known as Organised By Em by her 100,000 followers - has come up with a hack for making car journeys more enjoyable for everyone. And it only costs £4.

Her TikTok video on the hack , which has been viewed more than 15.3k times, shows how she creates activity packs for both of her children, designed to ensure they have a range of things to do during the journey, while also giving them responsibility over what they do and when. The packs generally include a mix of healthy snacks and small toys to keep them busy.

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We invited Emma onto the Brummie Mummies Podcast to talk about her hack - and all her other tips for organising family life, from homework to housework. Listen here.

“My youngest used to get really car sick and would sometimes get a bit anxious ahead of long journeys, so I found that putting together a little pack for her would help keep her mind off it," said mum-of-two Emma, whose children are aged eight and five.

“For activities and gifts, I get items that are low cost, fun and different to the things they already have at home. Little handheld games like a pinball game are great, basically anything that doesn’t have lots of little pieces that they could drop or lose.

"I also think it’s good to be clear from the off with the children what snacks they can have during the journey. Allowing them the chance to pick what they want and when, means that they have a little bit of responsibility – they learn that if they eat all their snacks in the first 20 minutes then they’ll have nothing left for the rest of the journey!"

The packs in her videos have generally been put together for less than £4 each. She likes to browse the party favours sections of stores like Flying Tiger, The Works, Poundland, Dunelm, B&M, Home Bargains and Primark and Boots to pick up treats for her kids.

Emma's tips for happy car journeys with kids

As well as the activity pack hack, Emma also shared her top five tips with Scrap Car Comparison for making car journeys as straightforward and distraction-free as possible:

If you have siblings, try and keep their snacks and gifts the same or similar and make sure you give them the same number of items – nobody wants arguments!
Create an emergency kit for the kids that you keep in the car boot - you can include spare clothes, medical supplies and activities (such as games or colouring books) in case you break down or get stuck in traffic.
Plan ahead and look at quieter journey times. We’ve done a couple of evening drives back home from holidays in the UK so that we could get the kids ready for bed in their PJs and let them fall asleep in the car.
For younger kids, make sure you have a potty in the car boot. They’re super helpful if you have to make any impromptu roadside stops!
Make sure everything is in reach so you don’t need to keep passing them things – having their own bag of goodies in the activity pack hack will make them feel more responsible.