This summer has been one of nonstop travel for our family. The extensive amounts of time en route to places has left me scrambling for car and plane activities to satisfy my 3 and 4 year olds like never before.
This is one idea that I came up with the night before we left for an early morning trip. I'd recently read on a blog about a mom who laminated a dot-to-dot book for her kid to take on a long flight. She then gave the pages to her child with a wipe-off marker so that they could erase and re-do the puzzles. This is key, because kids blow through those books so quickly and they love them. (I'm so sorry that I can't remember who to attribute that to. If you know, please tell me!). Anyhow, I didn't have time or energy to go get each page laminated... so I did my own version using things I always have around my house:
-- I bought one dot to dot book and split the pages into two books (two kids)
-- I put each page inside a plastic page protector which I bound into a book with 1" metal book rings and a fancy file folder cut into pieces for nice covers to the books.
-- At first I wasn't sure that the page protectors (they need to be the shiny type) would wipe off well, but they do!
-- As an added bonus, I also bought some post-it type alphabet letters and used some extra protectors in the back of the book to use as a word building spot. I'd wanted to find removable stickers for this, but in my rush was only able to find the paper ones.

They worked great! The books have been a hit all summer long.