What are some good car-crafts for long trips?
Kits in general are good because they tend to be self-contained with all the materials, and tell you what else to bring - forgetting a key item is frustrating for everyone.

There are various sewing craft kits, often using a plastic needle and pre-punched holes at least for younger ones.

Faux stained glass kits are tidy but might need too much of a steady hand for road trips, depending on your roads.

I don't think of them as craft but books with reusable stickers and background scenes are good, and can include a story-telling aspect if you like.


These kits can get repetitive or expensive if you travel a lot, so some alternatives:

Anything with stickers should work - perhaps sticker mosaics.

For an (almost) free option, collage using glue sticks and pictures from old magazines.  You may want to pre-cut the magazines, or have an adult cut them, as depending on the age of the kids and the state of the roads scissors may not be a good idea for children.  When using a glue sticks, a plastic lap tray with edges.

This will depend on how messily your children use them, but rubber stamps and ink pads can be quite fun (I've seen children playing together, one with clean hands, another using the ink pad for hand-prints - and it wasn't washable ink)


Activity books that mix colouring/drawing activities with non-craft activities such as puzzles will give some variety.
Definitely not craft, but games involving looking out of the window are always a good bet: who can spot something first (horse/emergency service vehicle/purple car etc.); guess how many of a particular object you'll see by the time you reach some defined point (about 10 minutes works) - who gets closest.  This works from surprisingly young as they just need to be able to count; you can also bring in basic arithmetic (&quot;you guessed 8, we've seen 7, so one more and you win&quot;).