A Great Answer
"Are we there yet?"
Younger children often don't have the fine-tuned sense of time required to fully understand a straightforward answer. But if you timed some of your children's familiar activities before you left, you can offer some interesting equivalencies.
If you don't have prepared times, just use activities you know have set times (classes, sports practices, etc.). First make a list of the activities; then draw a line of boxes next to each entry. Each box represents doing the listed activity once, and the entire line of boxes will represent your total trip time.
Now, when your children ask how long it will be until you arrive, you can have them check off the time you've already traveled in equivalent activities, and they'll be able to relate the time remaining to things they do often.
"Are we there yet?" "No, but it looks like we'll be there in six toothbrushings, one school recess, and three trips to the library."
© 2005 by Steve and Ruth Bennett. Excerpted from 365 Unplugged Family Fun Activities with permission of its publisher, Perseus Books Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
To order this book visit perseusbooksgroup.com.
